Skyrim Compilation
by Accursius
Summary: A collection of my Skyrim related story ideas: oneshots, concepts, etc. Hopefully your reviews will kick my muse into finally writing whole fanfictions. Please share your thougths with me!
1. Invasion across the Pandomaic Ocean

The characters Feast-on-Flesh and Valfar aren´t my own creation but that of DnkProductions and Omesean respectively on the Nexus. Whatever else you recognize also doesn´t belong to me and a lot of things you probably won´t recognize also don´t belong to me.

 **Season Unending: Kings of the Arena**

 **"Chapter 1": Unknown Shores**

 _Begin of holographic-water audio-visual-save, Biography entry number fourteen:_

 _Once again, the following account is based on my research made in the halls of stories underneath Windhelm._

 _3E202: Ulfric Stormcloak was crowned High King by the Dragons in the ancient city of Bromjunaar with a Greybeard, the Jarls, Thanes and countless people as witnesses. Afterwards Skyrim undergoes several heavy reforms; several new holds are formed to better defend the kingdoms borders, by putting great pressure on the outlaw mercenaries, which dabble in banditry when unemployed, he forces them to flee the country or conscript with his army, resulting in Skyrim having a severe decline in banditry and a huge standing military._

 _(Though many among them were just more or less uniformed ruffians. And still are.)_

 _Which saved Skyrim´s economy from collapse, as he utilizes them for public projects aside from war._

 _(While the Cyrodiilic scholar Severus Leppidus, argued in his 3E 282 published: "Thesis on the economics of warfare" against the positive aspect of war on a countries economy, Ulfric Stormcloaks total militarization of Skyrim, apart from being the only way to keep the new/old nation from sinking into anarchy, indeed did achieve positive results. The countless Landstriders who had lost their homes and occupations during the civil war raging over Skyrim´s suzerainty after the death, note to myself: be careful to remain neutral in my work on that matter! even nowadays all those glorifying the former empire get all touchy when you don´t call it murder and the Nords get all loud when you do so, of the former High King Torygg, needed to be employed less they all join outlaw organizations to keep their necks beneath water, whose number was rapidly cut down in the years to follow.)_

 _Autumn 3E203: The Nordic Kingdom of Skyrim sends an ultimatum to the Elder Council in White-Gold to recall their legionnaires garrisoned in Northend, the sole fort-port-city on Roscrea far in the north-east of the Sea of Ghosts, north of Morrowind, on the Border of Stillness._

 _An expected move, as Roscrea was traditionally a fief of Solitude. Following King_ _Thian_ _'s alliance by marriage with_ _Macalla_ _Queen of_ _Dawnstar_ _, they had sought to expand their influence further by annexing several former imperial fiefs, such as Roscrea, which had been ruled directly by the Emperor since Uriel V, who conquered it in the 271st year of the 3rd Era after 4 bloody years of war against the native Ros, savage kin to the Nords._

 _As we all know the Elder Council rejected the ultimatum, or rather never even bothered discussing it, also as expected, as the internal disputes over the imperial succession following Emperor Titus Mede II´s assassination by the Dark Brotherhood in 3E202 eclipsed any concerns they could have had about a few hundred legionnaires and a fief they could not even reach anymore._

 _That the new High King would want Roscrea to annex did not really come as a surprise to many anyway, nor did it seem to have been a matter of importance to Tamrielic powers as no one really cared for the icy island unreachable from any harbour but those of Skyrim and Morrowind. To Skyrim however it would provide an ideal fall back point should enemies threaten to decimate Skyrim´s people and eliminate an Imperial bastion in their backs. Furthermore the colony would serve as a forewarning system against an eventual invasion from Akavir, Argonia (I don´t believe that his Highness ever had any interest to let his troops get frostbitten tails, but whatever the Hist say), the Empire or the Dominion should they use the eastern sea-route._

 _The prevention of further winter raids on the northern shores of Morrowind and Solstheim by the Ros ever since the decline of the Empire would furthermore gain the High King the approval of House Redoran as well as of the East Empire Trading Company._

 _(How by the roots of the Hist could a trading organization connected to the then Emperor by blood-ties still trade with a rebellion leader? I will have to research this more in depth. Did Vittoria Vici perhaps have a grudge against Titus Mede II?)_

 _On Stormcloak´s orders the still living hirth warriors of the defeated Jarls had joined Rahgnarok´s fleet of 300 longships, now manned with roughly 12.000 warriors gathered from across Skyrim. The close cooperation and voluntary mixing of Stormcloak loyalists and Empire loyalists on the ships was planned to create companionship between the former enemies as they would fight and die beside each other in the shield wall and on the ships. And sailing seems to have been a great way to create camaraderie and discipline at the same time since time immemorial in Nord culture. The defeated warriors, part eager to prove their loyalty to the new High King, part still bitter about their losses were a boon and a risk for the expedition at the same time. For while the former Solitude guards had vital info on the island and its defenders there, a risk existed of them changing sides to the Empire once again. On the other hand the other inverse possibility, of them making the Solitude guard contingent on Roscrea join the Nord fleet was also possible. The combined pressure of the famed Stormblades leading the fleet and the superior numbers of the Stormcloak soldiers should diminish that risk. This strategy had already been discussed at the kings-moot in 3E202 in length for various scenarios._

 _Additionally, this would also be the first major military campaign were Skyrim´s repeat crossbows were used, for while the fleet´s troops were relatively badly equipped, compared to the well rounded equipment of a legionnaire, the supremely-commanding Stormblade as well as Jarl Vignar Grey-Mane of Whiterun, had paid from their own pockets to equip the troops with the new weapon model first presented to the gathered Jarls and the High King by those two at the kings-moot._

 _However while these pre-war preparations looked like a conventional invasion of Roscrea, Stormblade Valfar Rime-Tongue had been sent as a vanguard to the main fleet months in advance. His orders were to unite the giant-Nord tribes, commonly known as the Ros, on the island. Whose ruddy facial skin matched the dawn and starkly contrasted with their pale hair. Their hulking stature is taller than an Aldmer and as broad as an Orcish warchief. He did so by defeating their chieftains in honorary duels and effectively taking over the island while rousing their spirits with tales of glory on distant battlefields to come._

 _Finally in the beginning of winter of the same year, a point in time well chosen as m foreign power wanted to wage war on Skyrim´s soil in that season, the main battle fleet leaves the harbours of Solitude, Dawnstar, Windhelm and Solstheim. When Skyrim´s fleet then finally arrives on Roscrea´s shores they did not have to fight a single battle against the Legion, which had fortified the single city of the island previously, Valfar already had subjugated and rallied under him most of the native tribes, who then appeared inland from the fortified Imperial position with the fleet besieging them from the sea. Receiving offers and pleas to surrender themselves from friends and family members in the Nord fleet, the Solitude guards quickly capitulated, seeing the hopeless situation the Imperial commander Tomeo Arrovant followed their example and also laid down his weapons afterwards._

 _After Roscrea was seized by her fleet, a loyal but freshly recruited ready to be bloodied Stormcloak host is left behind in Roscrea under the command of Stormblade Frorkmar Banner-Torn, former Stormcloak commander of the Pale forces during the civil war, to defend the new hold and subjugate the last remaining independent Ros tribes on the island. The conquest that took Uriel´s Legions 4 bloody years to complete was performed by Valfar Rime-Tongue pretty much in less than a year by himself if one can believe the stone-bound vocal-memories. Stormblade Rahgnarok then gave the new Jarl of Roscrea, Valfar Rime-Tongue, command over most of the combined forces from Skyrim and Roscrea, now roughly 400 longships, the Ros having joined the fleet in their longships made of frostwood, which does not grow weak even in extreme cold temperatures or after being dumped in water, their ships are thus famed for being able to work as ice breakers, for no matter how many pieces of ice hit the ship would survive, to launch the assault on Cathnoquey, which seems to have been a target since the beginning. It appears as if handing overall command to Jarl Valfar Rime-Tongue seems to have been a necessary step to ensure the loyalty of the Ros, who would not have taken kindly to taking orders from a to them unknown warrior, even if their own Jarl told them to do so._

 _In the meantime, based on information gained from the Ros Stormblade Rahgnarok led an expedition into the north, with the goal to locate and establish an outpost on Atmora. It is known that upon reaching the outer ice-shelf she send most of her escort ships back to Roscrea and Valfar Rime-Tongue. Her personal ship however continued on, now airborn due to her own magiks and alchemy so as to pass over the ice shelf. Of her actions in Atmora, or if she even found the legendary continent no official recordings exist._

 _(And if I don´t get to meet some contemporary of her I will never know. Perhaps I should hire a necromancer´s skills?)_

 _Without any clever schemes for the conquest, or rather liberation in hindsight, of the Cathnoquey archipelago, Jarl Valfar Rime-Tongue first send out some scouting ships to the east of Morrowind far in the Pandomaic Ocean and then used the cover of the night to establish a beachhead on a outlying island. From there he delivered the Imperial forces an ultimatum to surrender themselves and their fortifications to his warriors._

 _The local military commander was at first confident that the foreign climate, nature and so on would take their toll on the Nord hosts and thus rejected the offer. Valfar Rime-Tongue however realised the dangers as well and thus reacted quickly before these disadvantages could endanger his army. He then quickly gathered an adequate force to take the nearest fortification of the empire and then continued to shout one Imperial stronghold open after another with the Quey mostly staying out of the fight as they held no love for either group after the cruelties the Empire committed against them after Uriel V conquered them in 276 after several short and brutal campaigns within a fortnight. For some reason they however did still supply both sides of the conflict with food and other raw materials._

 _(Well, all of Nirn knows the Quey are strange beings.)_

 _Without any reinforcements coming either from Yneslea or Tamriel itself, the local Legion officers quickly decided to cut their losses and take their chance with escaping to Yneslea. Apparently the Nord captains had accounted for that possibility and had laid ships in ambush for an escape, yet severely underestimated the naval combat capabilities and experience of the Imperial war galleys, trireme and dromons and their crews. Due to these factors several ships could escape the patrol ships, with quite a bit of dead among Skyrim´s warriors moved down by ballista, the military governor Decimus Scipio among them, and make their way to Yneslea to reinforce the troops there, who had already been warned by carrier pigeons._

 _High King Ulfric´s motivations for the conquest of Cathnoquey seems to have been securing the lucrative trade with tibrol-based wasabi produced on the archipelago, a spice which grows on a trickle of shoals and small islets and is liked a lot by the Nords, so lucrative in fact as skooma is to the nations of Morrowind, Argonia and the former Elsweyr. With the added benefit of actually being legal. He feared that the Empire would deprive Skyrim of the product or charge them exorbitant payments thus further damaging their economy. Other reasons was the unique ability of the archipelago itself and to cut off the Empire from its Pandomaic Ocean colonies, Cathnoquey being a colony formally reorganized under the terms of the_ _Veto of Charter and Decree of New Lordships [3E307], was_ _pretty much kept only because of the wasabi growing there I must add, and thus further securing Skyrim´s occupation of Roscrea._

 _Jarl Valfar Rime-Tongue immediately set sail to pursue the fleeing Imperials, leaving diplomatic matters on Cathnoquey with Stormblade Arrald Frozen-Heart, former commander of the Hjaalmarch Stormcloak forces, and some not specified diplomats and stewards accompanying the fleet for such an occasion. When they reached the purposely location of the twin islands of Yne and Slea, which were conquered in 3E 279 by Uriel V before undergoing civil unrest, they found exactly nothing and nobody. Not having properly resupplied on Cathnoquey, the fleet had no choice but to return to friendly harbours. From the records kept by the Imperials on Cathnoquey we can gleam that Yne and Slea are islands on an unique time stream. This is the reason for the occasional vanishing of the twin ilses. Luckily for the fleet, a time table of Yne and Slea´s appearance and disappearance was kept on Cathnoquey and thus they knew when the islands would appear again._

 _While the fleet impatiently waited on the Yneslean lanes shifting back into the right time phase, Stormblade Rahgnarok appeared on the northern horizon. Apparently she arrived with Atmoran warrior hosts, still half frozen, and a newly made flying fortress of ice, named Gramrelraald by her, and stone pulled by dragons and pushed by storm whipped clouds._

 _(The meaning either forgotten or so obvious to the Nords they did not bother recording it.)_

 _Apparently the ice made fortress had been necessary to escape Atmora in the first place from some antagonistic force there which besieged the position of Stormblade Rahgnarok´s expedition, so she just took to the air, and was not made with much of an intent aside from travelling and rejoining the Nord fleet. The implications that this first aerial fortress would have on global warfare and how the warriors of Skyrim would make use of the discovered technology were still unknown even to most of those knowing of the fortress itself. Soon the College of Winterhold, having learned of the technology via airpojection crafted sub-limnal communication, would sell the kingdom of Skyrim several of such fortresses to guard their northern coast. Though the size of these second generation fortresses was lessened, their abilities and battle qualities were increased and that generation remains in use until this day._

 _While certainly impressive both in size and battle strength, it could not land in the seas surrounding Cathnoquey as its maintenance personal feared the ice to melt in the tropically warm waters._

 _(I should add that the Nords seemed to suffer quite a bit under the climate, especially the Ros)_

 _Thus it is recorded that Stormblade Rahgnarok descended on the archipelago on a dragons back, a honour normally reserved for the Last Dragonborn of myth, and the Quey and Ros were awed at the sight, in equal measures of fear and respect._

 _Jarl Valfar Rime-Tongue was send back, his ship hulls filled with plunder, political Quey hostages headed for Windhelm and a medium contingent of Nords and Ros to Roscrea, so as to spread the tale of their exploits and secure his holdings in the north. He managed the week long voyage without incident. The returning warriors spread their tales of triumphs on distant shores to the people of Roscrea and Skyrim and Skyrim´s citizen were caught in a wave of euphoria._

 _Having finally set their sights on Yneslean lanes as they shifted into the current time, the fleet made the voyage in record time due to favourable winds made by Ros throats chanting themselves dry, only to have to face the fact that the Imperials had packed and run, deserting their fortifications and harbours. They anchored in the shallow waters around Yne, fearing an ambush by the Imperial navy, but upon nightfall the native Moche revealed themselves to them for discussion._

 _Proving to hold little of interest to the Nords, except for the mages and Stormblade Rahgnarok, as they were very interested in the Moche sound based magic arts the Nord fleet left the desert and rock twin islands as fast as possible, rationing their supplies so that they would not have to return to Cathnoquey before going to and having conquered their last goal sitting in the middle of the Pandomaic Ocean, Esroniet, conquered when Prince Bashomon surrendered his entire kingdom to the Septim Empire of Uriel V after a war in the years 282 and 284 pretty much bled his people dry, was the last island nation before the mysterious Akavir._

 _The week long voyage went by without notable incident, also due to the weather magics of Stormblade Rahgnarok the Ros and the Atmoran Nords, but none of the strange phenomenon caused by the meteorological matrices of Akavir were witnessed. Finally the island of Esroniet emerged before the keels of the invasion fleet, now roughly 2200 nautical miles from the eastern coast of Tamriel._

 _Stormblade Rahgnarok apparently feared that the Empire´s dromon, trireme, quatreme, quintreme and war galleys would take a huge toll on her own longships._

 _(Which simply were more for sailing and amphibious warfare than naval battles unlike the Imperial fleet)_

 _Thus, using the same technology she used to make her expedition ship airborne, she created the first flying fleet of the 3E. Though at that time of the expedition it had not been planned to use the technology invented by the College of Winterhold so soon on a whole fleet, still roughly a third of her longships were thus converted into aerial bomb dropping and archery ships. But even such a tactical advantage together with a host of near invincible dragons was deemed insufficient when confronted with whole squadrons of warships, which did not even stray far from the coastal defence outposts, opting for a defensive battle strategem, armed with scorpions, siege towers, ballista and catapults. For while Skyrim´s fleet did not lack in warriors nor ships, the few ships and crew send back together with Jarl Valfar Rime-Tongue hardly mattered nor the warriors left behind on Cathnoquey, what they did! lack in comparison to the Imperials were long ranged ship against ship weaponry. For while they did have some ship to ship weapons installed on the longships, their number simply could not compare to that of the Imperials. Furthermore the waters around Esroniet were, rightfully, also deemed a danger and thus any large scale manoeuvres to try and break up the Imperial fleet´s formations had to be discarded._

 _The strategy born between the Stormblades Rahgnarok and Yrsarald Thrice-Pierced, former commander of the Eastmarch Stormcloak forces, could simply be described as mad waste of resources or unusual scheme to preserve the lives of their own warriors. In 3E 207 the airborn fortress of Gramrelraald was dropped from high above in the skies on the gathered Imperial fleet, which had been lured together there by quick raids. This move would completely shattered the moral and cohesion of the Ruby Fleet, not to mention destroyed most of the ocean side buildings on the east of Esroniet, which were washed away in the resulting tidal wave together with the ships that had survived the initial drop, the military governors Gaius Crassius, Decimus Scipio and Accursius Selen within them. The Nord fleet suffered no real casualties from the strategy only due to the massive use of magic to hold back the tidal wave by freezing it or bypass it altogether, though it left their mages depleted and overtaxed for weeks. The Atmoran host which had formerly occupied the fortress had been stealthily flown down over the course of days by dragon transportation and taken over military compounds in the center of the island. The remaining scattered Imperial forces were then assaulted one after another and the island officially fell before Stormblade Rahgnarok´s fleet not two weeks after they had left Yneslea. However, several pockets of resistance still existed throughout the large island because differently from Roscrea, Skyrim simply lacked the full backing of the native population, differently from Cathnoquey and Yneslea the Legionnaires did not desert their positions to rally their forces either. The situation for the Imperial forces however was bleak, though they had contacted White-Gold through battlemages, no reinforcements would be coming to their aid and the chance that Cyrodiil could diplomatically force High King Ulfric to recall his fleet was nearly nil. As long as no political upheavals back in Skyrim would forc the fleet to return, the legionnaires were bound to lose their lives in the coming weeks or would have to surrender._

 _What further aggravated the position of the legionnaires was that High King Ulfric Stormcloak, advised by Stormblade Rahgnarok and his court, decided that neither Cathnoquey, Yneslea nor Esroniet could be held by Skyrim´s military without bringing the military and economical situation of Skyrim and Roscrea into jeopardy. The vast distances between the three island nations and Skyrim made it impossible to hold them in the kingdom. Especially as Yneslea was sometimes in other time lines and Esroniet suffered under violent monsoons in the winter storm season, a climate which drifted to them from Akavir every decade or so. Nor if the Argonians or Dunmer decided to raise a fleet and conquer Cathnoquey. The invasion had already served its purpose of destroying any possible footholds the Empire had in Skyrim´s back, the eastern sea route was already secured with the conquest of Roscrea unless the Dunmeri suddenly decided to attack them via the sea. Thus while Roscrea was truly integrated into the Nordic kingdom, Cathnoquey, Yneslea and Esroniet became only vassal states to Skyrim and regained their independence after centuries of imperial occupation,_ _even though the initial plan was to annex Cathnoquey as well and only leave the other two autonomous. Stormblade Rahgnarok however, perhaps to sweeten the deal for her High King back home, managed to bring the newly born nations of Cathnoquey, Yneslea and Esroniet to pay Skyrim yearly tribute from then on._

 _(Her turning up in a flying fortress and effectively squashing a whole armada in a single attack probably helped.)_

 _Their newly found independence lit a fire in the Esri, and suddenly the legionnaires found themselves hunted by the natives, rendering their previous advantage of knowing the land void._

 _This arrangement, with Skyrim pretty much having a monopoly on trade with the three islands of the Pandomaic Ocean, saved Skyrim´s economy, after the kingdom´s treasury was nearly emptied for the naval expedition. For while the troops had not drained too much from the economy and treasury due to many of them being former outlaws, the gathered resources and ship building did. Ransoming the captured legionnaires back to the crumbling Empire in fact worked, as the Elder Council no doubt wanted to gain intel on Skyrim´s conquest from them, but the ransom money paid to Skyrim was inconsequential in the face of the expenditures. I can only speculate that if the conquest of Roscrea would not have happened so cleanly that the expedition would have been ordered to sack Cathnoquey and finance itself out of the plunder. Similar fates could have befallen Esroniet and Yneslea, a possible debacle could have followed should either island had the power to withstand the Nord incursion. That the three island nations were liberated instead of turned into spoils of war was probably due to the initially weak resistance of the legionnaires guarding the former Imperial fiefs._

 _After having established themselves as allies to the island nations the major part of the Nord fleet returned to Skyrim laden with the riches of the tributes given and plunder from Imperial sources under the leadership of Stormblade Yrsarald Thrice-Pierced to northern waters, hunting down marauders and establishing outposts in the far north in the Sea of Ghosts, their purpose unknown to most at the time._

 _Another part of the fleet was transformed into a true aerial fleet on the orders of the High King, this new class of war-tools were patrolling the mountain ranges of Skyrim using the tactical advantage that flying granted them to more easily survey the hardly accessible regions. The dragons took offense at that, it is also recorded that several trigger happy captains had the notion to have found an easy way to fame by slaying a dragons from their new ships, so a few hostilities broke out until Ulfric ordered them back or to move around only in larger numbers and not to aggravate the mighty beings, nor to hunt the legendary snowwhales, as either was a waste of manpower. Instead the Archmage and Stormblade Rahgnarok donated the plans for aerial defence platforms for the defence of cities and wide range recognisance work. Those platforms were attached to the underneath of hot air balloons magically fuelled and connected to the land´s surface by leather-pipes hiding string ladders within them. Supplies were transported up via a system of pulleys. This new platform should be able to defend cities and other military installations from aerial attacks. The system however was in fact so easy to reproduce that the other nations also quickly adapted it._

 _The dragons having accompanied the Nord fleet from Atmora either returned to the frozen continent or settled somewhere in the Nordic Kingdom, their fate and names remain largely unknown._

 _(Though I suspect the hall of stories in Bromjunaar holds a detailed account of them.)_

 _Curiously, Stormblade Rahgnarok remained with a small fleet of 20 longships or so, filled with more Nord, Ros and Atmoran voluntaries than advisable on such ships, moored in Esroniet´s harbours. Their goal turned out to be the legendary Akavir._

 _End of holographic-water audio-visual-save of Biografy entry 14._

 _Recorder: Feast-on-Flesh_

 _The holographic-water will be packaged in a sealed standard handle with care item packaging for fRahgnarokile contents after being frozen for transport by Horsa Cruel-Sea._

 _Designation: Stormhold delivery-office, Kindgom of Argonia._

 _Code: 00716839_

 _Begin of holographic-water audio-visual-save of Biography entry 15._

 _The following account is based on research made in the halls of stories underneath Windhelm as well as many other sources I am too tired to recall here ... oh, Jarl Serana Volkihar of Northshore also contributed._

 _(I need some skooma!)_

 _..._

Immediately after the raspy voice stopped to be recorded did the green scaled Argonian busy himself with the stone shelfs again. He was searching, searching after the ancient tomes containing the stone-boung memories of the Nord fleets first encounter with the Ironborn, and how great wars were waged acros the eastern continents. All for the glory and honour of the Nords, for Skyrim.


	2. Promise of an End to the Struggle

A Berserk/Skyrim crossover scenario:

 **Promise of an End to the Struggle**

* * *

...

"Just one word. Just say, _you´ll give your daughter as a sacrifice_..."

The fat cockroach sticking to a wall trumpeted.

"...and that brand will appear on her body..."

The little weird bug snickered while flying among the white marble stairs and monuments of the realm.

"...she will become the devils´ property."

The succubus nearly purred from her position to the left on top of an inverted structure.

While the girl trembled in her thin sleeping dress, both the white cloth and her black curls becoming drenched in sweat because of the fear, trapped between the occult rune burned into the air in front of her and the chasm behind her which led to a maelstrom of evil souls some call Hell.

"Say it!..." Void of the Godhand booms in his grotesque form, still without opening his mouth, but easily cutting through the moaning of tormented souls arising from the hellish ocean they were all gazing at. "...One word ... just one word." The cut up head of a demon slug, whom their tempting whispers were directed at, received them loud and clear and confronted with his own mortality after his regenerating body had been smashed, cut, shot and burned to pieces by the accursed sacrifice of a swordsman, a human! at that, he was swallowed by despair at the sight of his imminent future. Of his once giant, many limbed body that was level with the tops of trees only a face remains. Yet again the Hand´s members dangled the treat of salvation in front of him. Again the price would be paid in the iron reeking blood and soft flesh of his family. And just like back then he was overcome with the desire of escape. All was better than how it is now, no matter the consequences, no matter the price, if he could just escape once again all would be well.

Could it be called a miracle then? That when the demons tear filled eye came to reflect more than his future, when it came to see once again the fearful and begging face of his own flesh and blood, angel like in his eyes, "...father..." from between small rosy lips this single word escaped and the sight of Hell was eclipsed by that of better times, that the threat of destiny, woven in the deepest dephts of the Not-Here and Not-There but Here and There, was denied?

Solemn, almost, the five "Angels" stood witnessing their Apostles now inevitable fall. Already the inmates of Hell were crawling towards them. Like a giant snake that rears its head from the muddy waters of a swamp, a column of corpse looking souls, crawling over each other like ants, had grown from the vortex of souls to which the realm of the God Hand opens up. A serpent of death, twenty humanoid shades thick and longer than a mortal can count, all shades supporting each other or crawling across another often using each other as ladders, stretches towards the structures the Demon Appointing Ceremony had not taken place.

Faster than fought imaginable they shades of the dead had reached the Counts remaining body, they clawed and began to reap his souls by ripping apart his skin. The Counts last sight was of his frozen in shock daughter which spared him from the sight of Vargas disfigured face being at the forefront of the horde. Soon the Counts soul was ripped from his shell of flesh and dragged to Hell by the damned, leaving behind only a bloody splotch of flesh and his death wailings putting any banshee to shame.

Transfixed by the horrid sight, Guts failed to notice the smaller corpses made tongue of shades gripping his leg with tens of arms, even their murmurs of "Sacrifice! Sacrifice!" could not prevent the small fairy being alerted by the swordsman roar of pain and fear as he was hoisted into the air, his legs caught in the vice like grip of the dead which had been attracted by the brand on his neck. Already Puck was racing after him in desperation. He did not know what he should do to help him, but this instinct born out of loyalty to this human urged him on. The struggler in the meantime had given up the struggle, already was his battered body not able to contest the host of shades dragging him. Yet he was even now aware of his ultimate goal, his hunt not finished, the receding back of God Hand Femto so sweet a target that even with the reapers of Hell at his heels he loaded the canon within his prosthetic and took his shot.

A cloud of flame and ashes shot from the wrist, the cannonball racing unhindered for the black cape-winged spectre that haunts his memories, all for naught, for because the cannonball could rend spectral flesh and bones the human weapon shattered on the telekinetic field surrounding the spirit. But another unforeseen but perhaps still intended result arouse from this action born in a moment of despair. The recoil of the cannon shot had ploughed Guts right through the wailing shades shackling his legs. Now without anything holding him the black swordsman fell through free space towards the waiting maws and claws of Hell´s inmates below. Undeterred the little pixie raced after him, but unhearing of the little ones pleading shouts, Guts last sight from his lone eye was of the five God Hand members throwing him glances as they retreated, the slated crimson orbs of Griffiths eyes burning themselves inside his skull.

That was before the very world and space around him shifted and rippled. Like the waves in a pond the space seemed to bend to accommodate an injection into the sum of spacial perception around him. Yet it did not carry any force behind the wave. The spectres of the dead were stretched into unimaginable forms, elongated yet losing nothing of their mass but their relative position to himself did not change. He saw his own left bend at angles a piece of steel should never be able to be and the annoying fairy suddenly had a twin stuck to him.

He did not have the chance to even truly comprehend what happened, when putrid air and corpse stench greeted him in advance to a great maw filled with sword teeth suddenly closing around him and the luminous insect, plunging them into foul darkness in a single bite.

* * *

The next sight of the black swordsman´s eye was an unusual one. Blinded by a strong light the only thing he can see is a grey and pointy eared face by looms over him, red eyes giving off a crimson shine like rubies and peering into his own. He tries to move, but fear overtakes him when he finds himself unable to even feel the rest of his body. Suddenly the face leans back out of sight.

"Master,..." a female voice calls out beside him. "...he is the right one, are we sure we got everything?" only to be answered by a grumbling voice from the far back. "Yes, yes. Finished already are you? Well then prepare him and yourself for the transition already. ... Unless you want to become my specimen, that is? The Lady lets me have so few chances to study the matter. Stop wasting my time otherwise. I am just going to pre-configure the aurbical entropy scale programme for the inter-kalpic and trans-planar shifting after the time-stream submersion and then enter diapause myself. Go on already."

The female voice sighs in exasperation and answers acknowledges the other voice just with a short "Yes, master." before the grey face once again looks down at him, telling him in a more cheery tone, "Goodbye! Until we meet again."

And he blacks out again.

* * *

When he comes to again, he once again is not master of his own fate, though this time he could at least struggle. Though futile as it turns out and he soon seizes trying to dislodge himself from the impossible large claws of the bird of prey carrying him with a vice like grip after no trace of a ground beneath him but just an everlasting ocean of clouds. While a storm rages around them, he can see above them a vast darkness and around him air so frigid he feared to drown because of the water in his lungs.

"Struggler, ... seek me out where truth dwells (Atmora = land of truth), that is if you wish to break the gears of doom, having your soul to fall into the preordained in between life abode, the Under-Halls, which some call Hell! Filled to the seams with the imbeciles which did not make it into Sovngarde."

Before he can even think of answering the bird, who had a surprisingly feminine voice he has to mentally add, the grip holding opens, giving him up to the storm and sending him falling once again. He tries to cry out, in vain for he falls into unconsciousness again and he feels he should cry out about that as well, as he feels darkness creeping into his mind.

Next, he will awaken among prisoners...


	3. Thalmor in the Snow-Woods

**Thalmor in the Snow-Woods**

* * *

It happened when Randgrid was camping in a dark patch of the Pale´s forest. She sat peacefully before the fire and nurtures it when a moonstone clad troop of Fists of Thalmor enforcers emerge from under their invisibility cloaks, their silencing spells still muffling the sound of their steps.

They face her with the usual slander and accusations, though it seems they finally added necromancy to their list of crimes.

Finally their tirade ended, not that Randgrid had reacted in any way to their presence, further infuriating the arrogant High Elves. Clouded by rage the troops commander ordered her apprehension and the soldiers began to move on her: some prepared their paralysis spells, little good it would do them, others prepared to intercept her magics, a few enchanted bows were drawn tight and the arrows pointy end pointed at her. The lead Thalmor, having donned heavily enchanted malachite glass armour, she could faintly the hum of power emanating from it, drew his sword and gave her a last ultimatum to surrender peacefully, her silence angering and also making him cautious at the same time. To many of his comrades had perished under her multitude of killing ways, cursed to never see the success of the Dominion in their present lives, for him to take her lightly. Though, in his mind, none of them had been worthy of their station anyway.

Their careful approach, fanatical determination and racial superiority was crushed, no burned to pieces when the large rock behind her shifted. Egg like, the snow covered stone-thought mass cracked and rumbled for a second until a long red scaled neck burst from the snow at the Thalmor´s feet. Their last sight was that of narrowing pupils from reptilian eyes over the curling, sword like teeth hiding lips, making a cruel sneer from which bright orange flames spewed forth with the song of howling wind combined with the crackling of fire, enveloping and sending the lot of them on into the Dreamsleeve, leaving behind but charred corpses infused with molten metall.

But even those remained not for long. Famished, though an immortal drake hardly could be said to ever being famished, sustenance for them being more of a luxury than need, the ancient Dovah began to carefully pick the smouldering corpses from the now not any more snow covered but hard backed ground. Once secured between his sword like front fangs, he threw them into the air, where they either broke apart, so well cooked were they, or made some involuntary circle motion before falling into the readied maw which swallowed them whole, armour and all.

 _"Keep some for me, would you, Odahviing."_

The deep rumble of Dovahzul made the now named Odahviing pause in confused contemplation. Something the straightforward Dovah was not used to apart from matters of the Thu´um.

"Thuri ... I did not know you partook in the eating habits of Lundga Altmer-Eater?"

He abstained from using the tongue of his brothers, sisters and soul-siblings, for he saw no need to scar the land even further, once they had done their purpose he even had breathed back in in the flames he had previously spoken into the Mundus.

 _"My rations are ending and that way I will not have to bother with stopping in Morthal."_

Another reason was that he knew she would cause all the destruction their kind usually so delighted in, for in these days she could not hold back her breath.

...


	4. Three Throats and Tongues

**Three Throats and Tongues**

Some time before the fateful battle on top of Apocrypha´s summit.

She laid down on her front, straddling a bench. Her limbs shackled with soft leather clothed cuffs and back bared to the world.

Miraak loomed above her, ready to realise the culmination of her efforts. And yet not.

"Do you really want to do this?" He asked uncharacteristically hesitating. It would be a first even for him.

As answer she just shot him a nasty glare from between the curtain of her blond hair obscuring her gagged face and tightened her hold on the short steel chains connecting her shackles with the stone floor until her knuckles turned white under the pressure.

No, she did not want to do this. Who would? But she needed wings and she needed the power of the Dov. Two more throats to roar her defiance with would serve her ambitions well. She had hatched this insane plan already thousands of years ago in the days of old Atmora. However, in the ages she lorded over the lands there had been no opportunity for her to amass the necessary means. There had been no major conflicts between the Dov and the Time-Eaters would not have stood quietly by while she plundered their kin otherwise. Still she had laboured to perfect the ceremony, drew up the optimal preparation steps and had conducted countless experiments in their nature similar to what she had planned.

Thus the ancient Dovahsonaak began his grizzly work. First he cut open her skin and flesh above her right shoulder precariously. Peeling them back until her bone was exposed to the air, heated by the roaring hearths in the adjacent chamber of the underground complex in Bromjunaar. Quickly he then took hold of one of the two serpents.

The two reptilians were natives of the marshes of Argonia, larger than any of the species native to Skyrim. They had been brought to Skyrim by sleazy merchants as they called themselves, others called them smugglers, who wanted to sell them to some wealthy collectors of curiosities and exotic things in Solitude. Instead, in a stroke of good luck for her, they had ended up in her possession. They had been raised by herself with care and love till they had reached an acceptable size. Dovahsos, drawn from the hearts of the divine beings, had been made to substitute the original serpent blood via frequent dialysis over many days. Once Miraak had become willing to assist in her undertaking, he spat out two dovahsil, which the priest had not yet digested. Adaic soul and mortal flesh was bound together, innumerable seals holding the mighty souls within the unfit vessels till they melded. The serpents consciousness had without a doubt succumbed to the eon old Sky-Serpents, but she hoped some affection for her had carried over. Now months later, roars had told her they were more dragon than serpent.

Miraak carefully fitted the serpents body, its tail already severed, to her shoulder. With a method similar to the bonemold forging of the greyfolk, he connected the partly liquefied vertebrae of the draconic serpent and her shoulderbone, fusing them while salty tears dripped down her face and from the bench she was fixed on down to the stone beneath her while blood streamed from the location of the operation across her body. No matter how painful it may be, she had to stay awake, lest the Dovahsil joining her body would overtake her during her unconsciousness.

Afterwards he carefully rejoined her flesh and skin around and with the reptilian transplant. Nerves and muscles healed together between the pincers in Miraaks hands under pin point application of restoration spells, while the potions she had previously downed boosted her own healing and numbed her pain.

Next he uncorked an alchemical mixture and placed it in front of the serpents nose to awaken it from its magical induced coma. Careful to not be within its range of view he stepped back to the operation table and its occupant. Indeed, it quickly rose from its slumber. Thrashing against its binds holding its body down and shutting its maw.

A success!

After stunning the serpent dragon-serpent with a quick paralysis spell, amplified through the seals on its body so it would be affected by such minor magics, and exchanging her nearly bitten through gag, that kept her from shouting out and biting her tongue in pain, Miraak went on to reproduce the success.

Another bone, on the left shoulder this time, was bared from her flesh to the world.

Another bone molten down in her living body.

Another brush with unconsciousness, helped in overcoming the moment of weakness with the subtle effect of the dried herbs steaming on a brazier in the corner.

Another dragon-serpent was attached to her.

Another storm-tongue...

Another power-throat was joined with her to shout the storms of her fury against her enemies.

The Dovahkiin injected into Mundus by the will of the traitorous Magnar would fall from the Heavens and his wings devoured by the Bloody Hawk of Atmora, who would rise in his stead together with the Grim-Dark Fox of Skyrim.

There on the summit of Apocrypha, all would be decided with the Woodland Man as the witness.


	5. Crossroads

Don´t own anything taken from the following artikles:

Skyrim/Berserk/Game of Thrones Crossing

* * *

 **Crossroads**

* * *

Dense fog shrouded the landscape, the small trees and bushes of the marshes had it hand from their branches like wet cloth, all of them unseen, hidden behind a murky wall that swallowed sound just as much as light.

It was one of these days were you had difficulties seeing your very own hand before your eyes, and a vicious battle could happen not even an arrows flight away without noticing.

Yet, a band of seven relentlessly proceeded down the mud road sitting on a damn and leading through the vast expanse of swampland around them. They were unbothered by the dew and mud clinging to their clothes and wetness soaking their boots.

It was a most peculiar group. Two of them were clearly still children, though in their teens already still far away from reaching an age that could have them considered adults.

One of them was a girl, dressed in a worn cloak with a high collar covering her small form. In her hand she gripped a carved walking stick, its shape reminding one of a shepherds' staff might have been made by a family member. A wide rimed travel hat hid her face in its shades and completed her assortment of clothes.

The garb of a person well accustomed to long travel, something which few highborn and even fever distrusting commoners liked to have on their lands. With the new rise of the Faith Militant across the southern lands, giving hints at being a vagrant, unbound by laws and customs and the ... all embracing arms of the Faith, was a dangerous thing to do. Those straying from their paths, and their destined lot in life were rarely tolerated by those in power.

The other child was a boy of similar age to the one the girl would be guessed at. In contrast to her, he however wore more common clothing, an assemble which one could think not inappropriate on a sellsword or rather bandit prowling the woods, just as well as on a merchant. Standing out the most was a sleeveless leather coat hanging on his lithe form and the blade slung haphazardly onto his back. Its quality good enough to make people believe he stole it, though with the wars raging on across the kingdoms he might have just pilfered it from a random corpse.

Together with an insect like fae, ...

"Hey! How dare you insult this beautiful me like that! At the very least I should be thought of as a chestnut!"

... they made up the vanguard of the travelling group.

Following close behind them was another group of three, with a makeup quite similar to those before them.

A thin young man walked on the right side of the road, his eyes perpetually closed giving him a fox like face so that one wondered in earnest how he could walk ten steps without running into someone before one put forth the rationale that he simply looked through his eyelashes ... probably. Most of the groups luggage had been pushed on the poor fellow. But he fulfilled his role without complaint.

Next to him walked a woman. Blond chin length hair, short compared to the current fashion, framed her good looking but exhausted face.

Again the pair was quite similar in age, yet what separated them from the others was that their clothes were of a visibly higher quality, though worn. The embroidered collars of their cloaks were held together by a brooch made from precious metals, and the cuffs of their boots were of similar make. Slender knight blades hung from their hips.

The third among their rank was another pixie like the first, eternal annoyance that he proved himself. A female of their Kynareth-blessed kind this time. She was sitting on the blond woman´s shoulder and was whispering something into her ear as if it was some big secret, which it may very well may have been.

Last but not least, trailing a bit behind his six travelling companions was a behemoth of a man, towering over the others like dark High Hrothgar over the plains of Whiterun. His lone eye swivelled across the mist clad trees and bushes like a hawk´s, trying to pierce any veil potentially hiding danger, always attentive and somewhat eager looking forward to the time till an opportunity offered itself to draw the humongous greatsword on his back, which abnormal size and weight was hidden beneath the folds of a dark ankle length fur cloak covering his person from the elements. These pelts draped over his body were no natural ones. Many a paw, adorned by dagger sized claws, were visible either loosely hanging down and swaying with his measured steps or stitched to others patches of the cloak keeping the different pelts together. Bushy tails finally nearly swept across the earthen ground. The different parts of the pelts were swimming together in their colours, giving the cloak an appearance more similar to a crawling carpet of living darkness than a piece of clothing. The identity of the beast, having had its fur taken for this ominous garment was indicated to the curious observer by the head draped from the warrior´s right shoulder, where it hanged down as if embracing the man. A great wolf´s head? Or perhaps that of a more sinister beast? None but those present in its making would ever know for certain.

On the opposite shoulder the long handle of the aforementioned greatsword kept the furs from spilling onto the warrior´s front, always ready for a quick draw in emergencies. The sword itself was safely hidden from exposure, though the "weapon" was in fact too big to be called a mere sword, too long and too thick, massive, heavy and far too rough. Indeed, it was more like a huge lump of tempered iron that eclipsed spears and halberds in length and could serve as a weapon just as well as a shield.

The warrior´s head was crowned by a short pitch black mane over a scar chiselled face. Dark stubble covered his strong chin wherever old wounds hadn´t left their mark. He was Guts the black Fox, Bileyg Blackmane of the flashing Eye, the Grim Fox of Atmora, folk from across the seas had many a name for him. Others were long since forgotten during the ravages of time.

The group trekked through the vapours clouded land for hours on the muddy road, the kids and faeries were talking animatedly for most of the time, with the two adults behind them sometimes adding their two septims, while behind them trailed a beast like being of tightly bound rage and combat readiness silently.

Until the sinister warrior´s steps ceased to disturb the puddles of murky water flooding the road.

Surprised, the six others turned, nearly expecting an attack from out of the fog to hit them. However what they saw when looking back at their comrade´s actions stunned even that group so accustomed to the strangeness that had pervaded their lives due to the scenes eeriness.

There, just beside the King´s Road´s crossing with a smaller path leading to the west, sat two people under a lone tree tending to the flames of a small fire between them over which a small cooking pot had been hung. Somehow they had passed them by without noticing. The two people sitting there silently and previously unnoticed could hardly be more different in their appearance.

One was small to begin with, and looked even smaller as she was hunched over towards the cauldron. Their form was hidden under a wide moss green long sleeved cloak, often covered by a veritable hoard of raven feathers, bones, small beaked skulls and other unusual or morbid trinkets.

The persons head was hidden in the shadows of pelt thrown around it, its colour long since faded and nowadays having no particular colour to be identified with. A gnarled hand alone was clearly visible, handling a wooden ladle between her dirtied fingers, her nails long enough to be called claws. One could only assume that the persons heads was just as repugnant and that the overall appearance didn´t lie and the person was indeed a female.

The other was a giant in contrast. Heavily cloaked in a pristine white fur robe, none of their features could be seen. Not even the mud, which stuck to everyone else present equally, safe the fae, seemed unwilling to even touch the hem of the wide robe dragging along the ground. Similar to their companion, the person hid their face in the darkness created by the white robes fur cowl, loping around the persons chest and back.

The person was without any disturbing accessories for the most part, but a necklace laid in a wide arc across their back and chest, instead of beads or precious metal, severed pointed ears and perforated bones hung from the band as grizzly decorations.

Only the sound of the ladle clanking against the iron cooking pot, catapulted the six persons out of their sudden astonishment. Only having their gaze practically directed into the pot, did they notice that while the water inside was boiling, there seemed to be no ingredients being cooked within its confines.

Even greater their wonder when their ever cold leader was gifting a part of his own provisions to the strange pair, handing them over into the unwashed hands of the shady cook.

"Kekeke! O´thanks to you, great Grim."

The raspy voice of an old woman came from beneath cook´s cowl.

"But before we repay you for yor ... o´so unusual kindness ..."

Here her tone truly dripped with thinly veiled sarcasm.

"... are yor dear travelling companions so uncultured an´ merciless to not only stride by without bothering to notice us on their fine, springy young legs ... as if we would hurt their precious sight, but even to grant these two old woman not a single alms after they were finally made conscious of the misery beneath their noble noses?"

Guts face twisted into a sneer for a moment, before starring at his group with his single eye and nodding towards the two people hunkering down at the crossroad, which were now both identified as woman.

The collective of four humans and the female fairy was stunned speechless, the whole scenario surreal and unusual in a way uncommon even to them who faced the impossible quite frequently due to their association with the dark warrior.

"All-righty!"

Puck exclaimed loudly, having as the only one not lost his marbles at the sudden evolution of events among the group.

"Pico, give out one item of food to each of you, line up and do some charity work like good ol´church goers should. While Eva and myself will stay here in safety far away from any grabby hands that old witch might have in spare. Be quick about it before her interests shift from food to your eyeballs."

His warning was followed by some "calming" words directed at them from the hag, who remained the only one to speak of the strange women.

"Oh, don´t worry lill´torchbug. No need to be shy, nor overly cautious. Lately I got my hands on a whole swarm of your faekin, therefore I have no reason to bother myself trapping mere two further specimen."

It does not need explaining why that did not lower their apprehension.

While the others were crowding around Serpico, awaiting him to give them some food as alms, Schierke went ahead and was offering a few herbs out of her own collection to the crone she now suspected to be a fellow practitioner of the arcane arts.

She dropped them into an outstretched hand. Before she could even see past the grime clinging to it at which she grimaced, and realise that the hand had only four fingers, it was pulled back towards the hag´s face. Peering closely at the palm so that her crooked nose nearly brushed it, the old woman inspected the gifted herbs within more closely while moving them around on her palm with a single claw like nail of her other hand.

The ladle, left behind in the cauldron for the moment.

Two herbs were quickly tossed into the boiling water, three others vanished beneath the woman´s coat without Schierke noticing the movement, the last dried leaf was pierced by a single nail and yellow teeth became visible in the shadow of her cloak as she bit of half of it, tasting it. The other half then quickly joined the two others as seasoning in the pot.

Schierke had her answer, those herbs which had vanished from the hand had been poisonous or at least had potent alchemic qualities. The combination of all five herbs would have neutralized nearly all negative effects, just in case she would not have been quick enough to stop the woman from tossing all of them into the boiling water. Not that the small dose would have been dangerous to a grown human normally, but with the apparent age of the women before her the young witch wanted to take no risks.

The witch girl´s joy at meeting a fellow user of the clever craft so soon after the death of her mistress suddenly vanished as a long nail sprouting from single bony digit was placed on her cheek dangerously close to her eye, again without her noticing the movement.

"Dat wasn´t the nicest thing to do, swooping in an´ testing a poor old, old woman like that out of the blue sky."

Black eyes, somehow reflecting the moving mist in them were gazing down at the younger witch. The hag crooned amused and threatening to slip into worse habits, taking sadistic joy in the widening of frightened eyes.

Schierke was overcome with sudden terror which gripped her heart and paralyzed her. For Puck´s earlier words wormed themselves into her psyche. With great dread she realized that she could neither conjure help or help herself in time should the old witch decide to claw out her eye, nor would any of her travelling companions be able to reach her in time to save her. She truly had foolishly given herself into the questionable mercy of the stranger before her.

"Oi! What do you think you´re doing to my charge, you wrinkled, old hag?!"

Evarella, ignoring Puck´s frantic tries to pull her away, suddenly shouted from beside Schierke. Anger and fear overwhelming the gut clenching feeling she got from the human before her. Only a flying dropkick from Puck saved his fellow fairy from having a similar claw aimed at her own face.

"Hahahaha."

He laughed timidly, hanging in midair with his small insect wings fluttering on his back to keep him steady.

"Those young ones, always so disrespectful to their elders... They still need to grow a lot, don´t they Melka?"

"Oooh? Where does this sudden bravery come from lill´torchbug? I can´t fathom your iron abode having loaned you any entrails."

The hag said, and Schierke saw how one of the beady, bird like eyes, which had leered at her from the darkness of the witches cowl to paralyze her, shifted over to look towards Guts behind her.

"Hmm, well whatever. It seems like yor dark knight grows tired of our lill´game, lill´nibble."

She removed her claw from under her eye, but still Schierke stood transfixed in place, not daring to move, though the stench which had tickled her nose when the crone had first spoken nearly made her gag by now.

"You both granted me items and knowledge, thus I shall not be scarce with yor reward. Lill´witch, after the fiery death of yor teacher ... you found yourself on a foreign path of carnage, that much you know already. But, wat you yet fail to see is that the longer you follow that path the less likely it is of you ever leaving it, until you too are drenched in the stench of blood and the colour of power. Nature cannot guide you here, on the path of carnage trodden by imbecilic men, women and their grand weapons of slaughter which are only topped by the size of their egos and ambitions. And yet the coming days of this land depend on those feasting on carnage. You are walking the right path, if you wish to save the nature of these lands, for nature cannot help itself against the creeping frost flooding it. Have no doubt of tat. Oh, don´t look at me like that with eyes of a kicked child, compared to ants, you are a human, but it is useless to fight blood with blood, or fire with fire and neither can you escape the cold grip with ice. A giant you might be sometimes, yet among the giants awaiting you come ´morrow on the road, you can either be one among many or just an ant!"

With these words the spell having forced Schierke into looking into the coal coloured bird eyes of the older witch as if frozen, faded. The scared girl hastily shuffled backwards, out of the hag´s reach. The ever loyal Evarella, as well as Puck joining her trying to give her comfort after the terror which had been instilled into her. As scared as she might be, the young prodigious witche´s mind was working in overdrive , trying to decrypt the "wisdoms" granted to her. First of all, she realized, there were several great dangers lurking ahead: cold grip, could refer to the coming winter or death in general, fire and blood. At least one of them would not only affect her group of friends but the very land itself, the coming winter was the most logical cause, yet she realized she had no idea how to fight the approaching season, nor did she know why this particular winter would be more of a problem than any previous winters. The second realization was that there indeed was no way for her to repel something that was more attuned to the locally prevalent element than herself. At least she hoped that was what she should glimpse out of the old witches cryptic remark. Should someone wish them harm who held more sway over the surrounding spirits she truly was nearly powerless. A great risk, especially if she didn´t have the option to retreat or set the location for the conflict.

The next to approach the now named old witch-woman Melka was Serpico. His alms consisted out of a few vegetables. Yet before he could hand them over, a third woman broke through the veil of fog, wafts of mist curling around her form. She was by far the most normal looking of the women. A long wool spun sash was wound around her upper body, serving as a hood just as well as a scarf and cloak, at her waist it was held together by a thick cord, pouches and vials dangling from it. While many of her features were hid under her hood, her face was that of a woman reaching her thirty's and vey pale, indicating that she did not spend much time outdoors. Coupled with the shadows around her eyes and her small mouth it made her look exhausted. Beneath her scarf she wore a brown leather tunic reaching down to her thighs, and blue pants which then vanished in high, crumpled dark brown leather boots, caked with mud up to her knees.

In her hands she carried an open basked, seemingly having collected food items in the marshes.

"Wat are you waiting around for? Stop gawking at the pretty morsel and go take them off him already. Don´t let yor mother wait unnecessarily."

After a bow in greeting towards Guts, the younger woman went to stand before Serpico to receive the vegetables he was offering. Then she sat down on the unoccupied side of the fire place after having thrown a leather bag on the sludge as a seat. Without having said a word to the gathered humans she hunches over her spoils and begins to cut up her gathered ingredients with a broad dagger she had procured from within her garb.

Puck joined her in the air, having cried "Illia!" in a friendly greeting which she returned with a smile and "How are you, Puck?"

Next in line was Serpico, whom she called dog and quickly chased away after talk of twin trees.

Isidro handed them a loaf of bread. Like a pouting kid he stood far too rigid, his movements like stiff. All to mask his fear when `Melka´ leaned towards him and locked black eyes with him. Her putrid breath only stops assaulting his face when she abruptly turns away and faces the white clad woman across the cauldron.

"I don´t have any wisdoms for this morsel, you?"

The fur-clad giant moved beneath her cloak, making the white fur shift. It looked almost as if she slept till now, but she must have been aware of her surroundings still, for she shortly spoke. Her voice boomed across the gathered while still keeping a feminine tint.

"Might, patience, knowledge and nature, this is the chain of the mightiest of warriors. You will only grow mightier till your reach your zenith, if you are patient enough to survive that long. Like most children your age, you thirst for strength, yet you didn´t just dream of it but actually ventured out to find it, you lack patience, yet are blessed by Nocturnal´s luck and the road you follow in the shadows of the gore-named will grow a warrior´s mind and nature within yourself. But where is your knowledge little monkey?"

Isidro was about to either ask a question or insult her for calling him an idiot through the flower but Serpico quickly grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, pulling him away under the laughter of the crone.

As the last of the lot, Farneze steps forward. Though she felt quite awkward, she does so resolutely. Her alms is cheese.

`Sheogorath approves of you!´

The thought came unbidden to those hailing from far Tamriel.

"Ahh, a witch-huntress, like and like calls each other. Don´t worry lill´girl, you´ll be stained pitch black soon enough. Though if you wish to live in the light it is high time for you to walk outside the shadows of others."

After Guts companions had paraded one by one in front of the with-trio, the woman hidden under layers of white fur moves for the first time since they became aware of her. She stands up, towering above everyone present, and approaches Guts.

White and Black.

An armoured limb, steel plates decorated with intricate, knot like lines on bands of fur wound around her arm, parted her cloak from underneath before reaching up and pulling down her cowl, thus expose her face to the elements as well as the eyes of the travelling group. By now curiosity had began to gnaw at those unfamiliar with the woman from prior meetings.

Golden hair bound in snake like braids fell down to her chest. Her normally good looking face was ruined by angry red nicks, scars and blue woad paint covering her face in a broad half circle around one of her frost blue eyes. All of which contrasted against her pale skin.

The same arm that previously pulled down her hood, reached over to Guts, and pulled his dark head into a hug before she leans down and kissed him.

Serpico nearly let his bags fall down at this sight, and he was not alone in his surprise. Evarella for one was shooting towards Puck faster than she had ever flown previously, tearing him away from his talk with the newcomer and was burying him in questions, their words so hush, hush none could make them out, squirming all the while.

Meanwhile Schierke was blushing, her head simulating a ripe tomato, Isidro would have to scrub his jaw from the floor. Farneze at least only froze up in shock.

"You´ve had your fun, now tell me already why you crossed the sea. Not even you would come all that way just to harass me."

Guts growls out after they separated from the kiss.

"Are you sure?"

She asked mocking him, before resting their foreheads against each other.

"Yes, matters over there shouldn´t bore you for a time."

"Indeed, but I had a vision I felt you´d want to know."

"And what would that be? I won´t be the sword to press others into your schemes again."

"Don´t worry, I read the weave spun by the Dreamsleeve. And I won´t ask you to do anything, in fact, no matter what you do I won´t profit from it. Any further complaints, my dear?"

Rand, while going back to retake her seat, then talks to him.

"Yeah, could you take us wherever this information will lead us?"

"No can do, this is after all nothing more than a dream I projected over the weavings."

"Damn, should´ve known."

"A stag, burning himself away, heads south just as you heads north. Grim fox and burning stag will meet where ravens descent. Your prey is the same yet different and there is a risk of the prey bursting forth from the burning stag. Like an illness the prey might infest it and spread. That is all I saw, nor am I knowledgeable enough in the metaphors of this land to tell more than you already know. Farewell, may your path be true."

"Now be gone, walking nibbles. Unless you fancy participating in our meal? Kekeke!"

Guts turned away and resumed walking, his cloak lazily swishing behind him like a great beast that knows no enemies nor need to move quickly. On the crossroad he went northwards. The others of his group followed swiftly and silently at first, still stunned from it all.

"Guts, do you know what her vision meant?"

Schierke blurted out after getting out of immediate earshot of the three witches sitting around their fire.

"Can´t think of anyone but Stannis Baratheon as the burning stag. He´ll march on Winterfell and ravens descend on battlefields just as on their nests. That city will soon be both ... and filled to the brink with refugees, both from the winter and the approaching army. Either the Boltons somehow convert the Baratheon troops or there´re potential Apostles amongst their ranks too. Despair, and sacrifices. All the ingredients are there."

The group vanished into the omnipresent fog, the same way they had been spit out by it. Likewise three witches too ceased to be.

Seven woke beneath the shades of a carved weirwood tree.

Three woke across the foamy ocean waves, high above the ice choked seas of Winterhold.


	6. Edge of Lore

_"Edge of Lore" came about because I wanted to explore how far I can twist TES lore, within its existing boundaries, into the region of sci-fi territory. Or rather how similar would be magic and technology in a space battle setting. With what kind of magics would they replace sci-fi technology with?_

 _If you are wondering how I could come up with the idea that the medieval Elder Scrolls races have any way to achieve space flight then I point you to the Remanada, Battlespire game, MK´s writings, C0DA and other TES workds._

 _If you don´t understand something it´s probably magitech mumbo jumbo, Nord kennings, or my English XD Please let me know if the magitech pieces/terms are too confusing or so hard to follow that reading becomes a chore._

Naturally, but oh so sadly, I have no rights to anything coming from any franchise.

Please enjoy!

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 _"Any Sufficiently Analyzed Magic is indistinguishable from SCIENCE!"_

 _"You don't really know how powerstones work. You've created a whole city that relies on an energy source you do not understand. 'Magic!' you say. 'It's magic!' Oh, how clever. And then when the magic fails, you simply say, 'It must have been more magic!'"_

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 **Prologue**

 **City of Windhelm, Skyrim**

 **Middas, 6th of Sun´s Height**

 **Year 21 of the 5th Era**

Windhelm, City of Kings, Ysgramor first among them. An oppressive city to any wanderer if one ever saw one. And cold! But while the northern cities of Dawnstar and Winterhold can lay claim to the dubious honour of being the city with the most frostbite cases in their populace, Windhelm looks colder and more ominous than either of them. Perhaps it is the biting eastern wind, which sometimes sweeps ashes from Morrowind over to Skyrim and howls through the narrow streets between high walls of granite stone, bringing frost into every nook and pelt fold, or the ice crust on the White River, which relatively warm stream swallows up the north born ice waves of River Yorgrim just outside the towering city walls causing a fine mist to cling to about nearly everything.

Or perhaps it was the vicious faces, leering down from every corner of the wall and niche without number. Hawks of stone with ever open eyes, beaks poised to rend flesh, and other heads carved from stone and iron as with the express purpose to frighten any visitor.

No matter, why his spikes along his tail and at the back of his head bristled was unimportant. They did, and he didn´t like it.

But for him and another who were trudging through the long corridors of the catacombs in the light of a constant candlelight enchanted lantern such concerns were instead momentarily replaced with claustrophobic urges and the boredom of their job related duties.

While one was eager enough to see through their endeavour at the far end of the corridor, he was also so plagued by the oppressive darkness of the underground labyrinth that he hardly could work up the mum to see his project through. Compared to the stillness and heavy stone of the north the root-made-deep-ways of Argonia were positively lively.

On the other hand, the other had walked this path so often that if he initially did have any fears or apprehension on things lurking in the folds of unseen shadows, they had become sucked out with each patrol and each step of the way.

The uniformed man´s distance eating steps have established a rhythmic marching sound when his heavy boots step on well walked granite stone that made up the walls, floor and arched underground ceiling. The stillness and stale air that could not be worse in a tomb, not that the labyrinth they were in right now had not once been a tomb, do not seem to bother him, so thinks the former while acknowledging that with the other´s face hidden behind the helmets mask nothing much can be gleamed from him. At least his scales were out of the freezing wind, but now he wished for a bit of a gale to alleviate the death like stillness.

"W´re here."

Suddenly the second ones voice wakes the first one out of his oppression induced reverie, abruptly forcing him into the present again when his guard suddenly stops and while he himself still walks some steps forward in stupor, his taller companion turns to the intact wall. He fiddles around with some of the tunnel´s stones to his left, too quickly for his eyes to catch, causing a hidden door to open up in the wall. Hoping for a better environment on the other side he fear stricken of the two quickly shuffles through, expecting a higher room and more open place. His hopes were squashed when he found himself face to face with roves of bookshelves, or rather stone shelves. So high are they, so narrow the pathways in-between that he actually stumbles back again nearly tripping over his own tail.

"What´s with you?" His guide queried. "First you pester us like Alduin´s gonna eat Nirn tonight and now you lollygag around on the porch? Well, not my concern. Here, that´s the page-turn stone. Well, have fun then."

"What!? Wait, wait, you can´t leave me here alone! There are at least a hundred shelves in this room, shifting through them all will take me longer than when I hatched!"

"Oh, be silent! I have no desire to spend an uncountable span of hiccups in this Kynareth forsaken room! If you want to search through all this old dust ... go on, but without me. You are the one who claimed he would not believe the skalds and elders accounts. Don´t drag me into this tree-sucker!"

Desperate now he tried once again from a different vector. "And what if I read something I´m not allowed too? If you don´t stay here I could scavenge through all of these deposited memories for sensitive information?!"

"Oh come on scaly, the page-turn stone scans and saves every rune-stone you read, when you leave through the only exit of this place, which is my guardroom, you´ll have to return the stone, and I´m gonna check what you read and if I find out you read a classified rune-stone you´re gonna find yourself faster in the Blackreach mines than you can climb up a Hist´s trunk."

With these encouraging last words the local turns around and makes for his post once more with long strides.

"Wait a bit! How will I be able to find out of here without you?!"

In response the Windhelm guard simply hit with his armoured fist against the tunnels stone, causing sparks and an awful screech to fill the tunnel.

"The same way I did, use the magic scroll on the wall."

Stumped, and gripped by fear seeing the shrinking light source in front of him, the Argonian looked around for what his former guide had meant, but a detect magic spell only lead him into the chamber of records again. He was already running after the tall Nord when he noticed a metal tube affixed to the stonewall where the guard had punched the stone. Intrigued by the out of place wall decoration, he rightly judged it far too small to hold a torch, he fingered it for a bit in the dim light of his own lantern until he pulled out a curled up leather scroll, which upon closer inspection turned out to be a detail lacking map of the whole place.

...

"Don´t dally too long away from the door, or else it´s gonna close by itself."

The last thing the Nord warrior heard from his charge were running feet.

...

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 **Commentary extracted from the Collection of 5E Codices Attempts to Reach Aetherius**

 _#2 note:_ _"Visit to Aetherius occur even less frequently than to Oblivion, for the void is a long expanse and only the stars offer portal for aetherial travel, or the judicious use of magic. The expeditions of the Reman Dynasty and the Sun Birds of Alinor are the most famous attempts in our histories, and it is a cosmic irony that both of them were eventually dissolved for the same reason: the untenable expenditures required to reach magic by magicka. Their only legacy is the Royal Imperial Mananauts of the Elder Council and the great Orrery at Firsthold, whose spheres are made up of genuine celestial mineral gathered by travellers during the Merethic Era."_

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Sound being Life.

Silence, the Music of Life.

Or perhaps rather, Nothingness?

That is the nature of the Void, per definition of the sensory tools of both mortals and immortals across all of the Aurbis - a nature that can only be described as the absence of sound [music].

It is the deafness inducing darkness beyond the realms of the mortals and Princes. All matter and light of the plane is held within its unknown confines.

And yet, while foreign and dangerous to the vast majority, it is well within their reach.

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 **Memory extracted from the Collection of 5E Codices actual and non-redacted**

 **5E15 Sun´s Dawn**

 **Void between the mundial planes Zenithar and Mara**

A great body ploughs itself a way through the innumerable debris in the caught by the aura of the Aedroth. A bubble of sound´s medium enveloping it. Large and smaller asteroids as well as random detritus of past battles impact heavily against the battle scared armour before being swept aside easily by six large flippers. Rays of mist shrouded blue light radiate from points on the surface pieced together out of ever-ice, hoarsteel and basalt, illuminating the artificial behemonthian existence with Zenithar in the backdrop.

"Valdimar, and ya lot too! Keep the rocks from the back fin sector, the wells there need their maintenance!"

Argis the Bulwark bellows to his counterpart in outer-team-leader-duty on the other side of the whale, as well as his own slew of sailors. His head and mane of blond hair is encased in the steel confines of a ram horned helmet, his hoary beard, which he grew out for several years now, somehow tucked into the mask of the mesh of glossy ebony that was to keep his body in a single piece against the deprivation of the Void while he oversaw his team toiling on the outside of the whale.

That, and keeping them from staring into the dark too long. The big black puts funny ideas in a man's head. Better take no notice of it.

Further down the length of the whale, pieces of the war-frame, once a fully sealed shell that locked together like a puzzle, now their vectors are told to move aside. The chunks of steel shift a little, disconnect from their interlocked state and split open to rise up and spin around to form a booth supporting the shield of stahlrim above. An airlock in case of loss of breathable atmosphere surrounding the voidcraft.

Eola slips through the so created passage, a shield of stahlrim all that separates her from the darkness. On her hands, mystic tuning gloves, soft white leather with brass cricket lines running up to the fingertips. She too wears a second garb of ebon weave. The Breton attaches her safety rope of sinew to the railings running down the whole length of the hundred meter voidcraft, its grip clamping down with a sharp snap.

With a jump she moves, floating downwards before reaching the first fountain of starlight in the sector around the dorsal fin. She catches herself on its rim, narrows the rope´s grip on the railing to fix her position and begins with her work on removing any insalubrious Void debris caught in the magicka well´s crucibles, where all sustenance flows from that bestows the wards on the once-was-a-snowwhale their efficacies. Bathed in starlight she tunes the prisms of meteoritic iron, the inundation of impurities, that was picked up by and bundled together with magicka from Aetherius, becomes expelled outwards into the cloud surrounding their steed, and freeing the prisms so they continue according to their nature undisturbed.

While not aetherfire, it was still dangerous, and the spellsword needed to be careful lest she becomes dissolved, her eye strains looking into the brilliance.

Once finished, the well now again catches starlight which flows in an agonizingly luminous column into the vessel. A pure, brilliant blue streak against the all encompassing darkness.

She shouts late.

"Well-sweeper on the hull!"

For she moves away from the relative safety of the towering fin on the whale´s back to the less protected wells across its length. While concentrating on her own duty she has no eyesight to spare and needs to trust the sailors under Valdimar and Argis, her leaders huscarls, to not let any wildly racing void junk strike her down on this job. Reminding them of her existence cannot hurt.

Whooping 12 further wells having been cleaned by her, her hands shake with pain from overload of unreleased magicka and exhaustion. As the port folds back close behind her she just hopes the coming battle doesn't necessitates her going into diapause. The medicus Erandur will fix her up, but she´d like to spend some time recovering in sleep. She sounds the bone chimes to let him know she´ll be visiting the priest of Mara though he´s going to dislike it. As always.

Gas is shot from the blowholes along the crest of the head; the air spreads around the void-ship all the way to the tail´s double flippers. The Void exposed crew members each check their breathing apparatus, dying because they lost their hold on due to uncontrolled laughter makes for no entry into Sovngarde. Nearly simultaneously the old air is sucked into the ship´s interior as the corpse inhales. Thus the periodic (repetition necessary every eighth part of the Nirnian Cycle) exchange of gas composing the element-bubble surrounding the dreadnaught had taken place.

In the brain-chamber the five plus crew members are in discussion, others are in adjacent rooms of the termitarium, which stretches from the front of the corpse to its narrowing at the end.

„Are they still tailing us?" Gullveig questions full of hope. Uthgerd translating her lightning quick sign-talk into verbal words.

„Yes, the squadron of Daedric cleavers isn´t far from our tail. We keep our distance at 934 skies as you wanted. While we have our eyes on the Void and are omnisapient in two arcs around our aura the world below us remains murky as it experiences unanticipated fracturing."

Illia´s voice resounds from a rippling gel screen, linked to another augury by way of kinetically-interlinked sympathetic connectivity, an analogy held as a sea of silver within the wrenched open belly of some sort of creature. Its beheaded carcass is suspended from the wall of the cave to Gullveig´s left. Beside that impressive piece of visceromancy, faithful huscarl Iona stands guard over her thane in full skyforge steel armament.

„Don´t completely ignore our hunters. Have the mages on our left side reel in some rocks and send at them. They shouldn´t worry about their aim. Better some natives get squashed to dust than the former Leaper Demon King´s dogs get the scent that we would care for them."

The Stormblade gives her orders, once again interpreted by the aforementioned Nord shieldmaiden, swiftly from beside the ego-tamer´s seat in the spine. The "seat" was a piece of etched esotera and exact sigils from which one could hold audience with Cloudeater´s non available ego to better steer the corpse.

Even before the living snowwhales became willing to join Skyrim´s military in return for protection from the dragons, it had been the first voidcraft of its kind. Though its official name is Cloudeater, the name _Warrior Wench_ entrenched itself with the warriors, because Galmar Stone-Fist, in his usual blunt, grumpy, hibernating bear-like way, loudly protested against an undead void-steed, saying he´d never put himself inside of it.

The name stuck.

Currently a female Quey, Ansijoemia be her name, her two flesh braids denoting her as having matured, was strapped onto it. No one else but someone from that subservient race would actually volunteer for this duty. Even so her orange skin with blue tiger stripes and curled webbed palms and feet shoved the mental stress placed on her, even with her blindfold at least shutting one of her senses.

„Aye, Khajiit will relay."

J´zargo interjects, the greyish Khajiit flicks his tail before swiftly running off into the nearest propylon chamber, the propylon index to call up the correct matter displacement field for his goal at the ready. He is practically giddy to cause mayhem and earn further fame in combat against the Daedric fleets of Dagon.

„How long till we arrive at the beacon?"

„We´re at 655483 skies from it. I´d say it´ll takes us some thirty minutes at our current speed."

Illia again.

„Curse ye Nocturnal! How many knots are we away from Zenithar´s slipstream then?"

„Five."

„Is it turbulent?" The tall Nord woman, clad in ever-ice from the crest of her head down to her toes, with horns erect, and blazing eyes looking into the Void beyond, has Uthgerd ask worried.

„Nay. Quite stable."

Is the answer shouted over from the chamber where the sensor net comes together by a raspy voice via the gel screen the _Dovahkiin_ ´s witch-daughter Illia has her face buried in. It is either Melka or the Dragonborn´s witch-wife Moira from Witchmist Grove, both serving aboard as wyresses. The voices of the hagravens bound to Gullveig, either through bonds of unholy matrimony or friendship, are too similar that she could differentiate between them if not through sight.

"Should I have her synchronise with the Aedra´s elevated spheres?"

Thane Gullveig of Atmora does gestures that are to be understood as follows:

"Aye. Remove us from Zenithar´s aura once he has carried us close to Mara on his path. We´ll surprise the knife-ears by starting our offensive from within the cloudsstream."

"If we time it right Dibella could just be dancing around Mara, we could use her to circle behind them if we hide within her boundaries for but a moment?"

Asks Ralof, the addition of the stormcloak warrior from Riverwood and his troop was her concession to those that clamoured her assortment of crewmembers couldn't be trusted. Not that the "cloak" was bad at his job.

„It should squeeze out some extra time. We however must take precaution that the axe-heads still have us sighted in their possipoint net, but that the sunbirds remain blind to our threat."

"... Very well, do it! Good idea Ralof! Have Illia report to you, I´m going to work up the corpse for battle."

The ice armoured figure leaves the room without ever having spoken a single word, the dragon portrayal of iron closes behind her, biting down on the other half of the door, taking their view of how she jumps across the levitation shaft. Those were built in the image of the Dunmeri mushroom towers like Tel Mithryn and allow easy passage between the chambers with level differences.

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 **Outside on the hull again** \- J´zargo, now floating freely, because moonsugar x Khajiit, urges his co-workers to be faster.

The hull going crews were called together and reinforced by whoever the chaotic cat-mage could scrounge together, from the mage contingent to thralls from Oblivion and battle hardened warriors. Harpoons, tips of green orichalcum meant to be able to pierce all low density bodies, and shafts wrought from tempered iron so they won´t break in the middle against great weight, had been handed out beforehand and now they stand together strewn out along the four longitude-sectors of the void-steed.

Benor is the first to reel in a catch. As there is no time to interrogate each and every clump of dust on his nymic, Faralda hastens herself to calculate the possipoints which the meteorite needs to exist in to hit their pursuers.

Teldryn Sero, who has learned to harpoon while hunting the cliffracers of Vvardenfell, soon is leading the record on who has harpooned the most rocks. That is until Belrand gets annoyed by the dark elve´s boasts and enters in a competition with him. Afterwards the two are too occupied with each other to keep their position ahead of the others. Insults are traded, no records kept.

Fjola, the former bandit queen had been pardoned for her crimes by the High King for her services when he was roping the vagrant bands into joining his army, is clamped to the hull atop the whale´s belly, beside Eisa Blackthorn. The two former outlaws are getting along well under royal Skyrim´s employ.

Talvas, Neloth´s unfortunate apprentice, clad in a tight suit of netch leather and chitin, hurries between them and the lancers who have concentrated themselves around the Stormblade´s shield-sister Mjoll the Lioness further down the whale.

One may wonder why this arrangement came about; others know it to be the cat´s idea of a joke.

The sinew-cables of the harpoons are attached to hooks, in turn those are connected to machineries in the inside of the void-steed. Said machineries are found after each section of chambers. There within a great hollow, reaching from the spine down to the inner bottom of the whale´s stomach, a slew of sweating, bare-chested giantish men toil turning a large handle that makes an assortment of several series of Dwemeri gears and wheels, sets of interlinked clockworks, one after another and aiding each other spin and clank like one images Dwemer bastion of old to sound, just without the usual steam. Those gears offer the necessary force to pull in several harpooned asteroids at once.

Erik the Slayer, morose that he got nothing much to catch, Zenithar looming just beneath him, swiftly hatches out a plan to anchor their steed on the mountain peaks of Zenithar, rip them from their roots and have them swim on the slipstream´s current, in hopes that they will bother the hounds of Dagon on their pursuit later on.

Pixie messengers are sent out to all people who will need to know. His brainchild is adopted, and expanded as _Thu´um_ propelled harpoons would be used to latch onto passing Dibella, the smallest of the three Aedra just so happens to pass between near the positions of Zenithar and Mara.

Talk of divine intervention.

Success of the first strategy will forever remain unknown; no one anticipates the Mehrune´s commanders will be forthcoming with their destruction toll.

Soon the on-duty-arcanists get into a routine. Helgi is made keeper-of t´logs, the youngest witch on board is not yet practiced enough with spontaneous calcs to be much of use with throwing around rocks the size of houses but acts well as an informant on the variety of potential angles and spotter for their own movements across the canvas of the stars.

So the others, like Brelyna just now, report and are informed by the young lass of the calculated lanes their improvised projectiles travel on. It would not do well to have too many of the rocks crush each other even before they can infuriate the Dremora piloting the cleavers.

Vorstag somehow manages to reel in three Void borne rocks with a single throw of his harpoon, their trajectory causing them to collide and then their aura´s locked onto each other. Seeing this Onmund and Anise hurry over to him, already babbling under their breath about how drunken Nords shouldn´t be let out of the dormitories and having potential angled arcs swirl in their thoughts, hoping to reach him before he becomes squashed under his catch.

So it happens that Onmund nearly runs over young Grimvar Cruel-Sea, the youngster from Windhelm more adept than at first believed when the Stormblade took him in as a war-son when he had been still unblooded.

Meanwhile other crew members are already pushing sloadbags up by pole-struts to serve as cushioning bladders.

Dust washes across the eyelets of their helmets and the hull makes a sound that J´zargo frowns at, but the whale is carrying them well enough and all would be well.

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 **Commentary extracted from the Collection of 4E Codices Thane Gullveig of Skyrim on the Sun Birds of Alinor**

 _#9 note: "Sunbirds! Meridia´s Aurorans aren´t a good comparison. To make it clear, the snowwhales of old were marvels of cooperation between former enemies and ingenuity, considering we cobbled together a working whole out of vastly differing magecrafts. Atmoran clever-craft, secret Telvanni magicks, hagraven crap, modern magic-systems, Dwemeri magitech and what not. That the snowwhales worked at all already shoved our genius. They were utter gutter-shite compared to the sunbirds though!_

 _Sunbirds! Sun´s radiance made crystal-like beauty in the shaped as birds, luminous, sentient. Compared to them ours were like rocks thrown skywards by envy-green children, hoping to shoot down some... Well we managed."_

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 **Sametime, bridge of the TADSBA Windscepter, Alinorian Sunbird of the Altmeri Dominion, within the neighbouring aura of Mara/ actual**

It´s a bright quasi circular room, one cannot be sure about the exact angles. Light drifts in the air freely like wisps.

Alinor´s fabled Sun Birds are as their makers see themselves, a cross between having opulent beauty and elegant, yet ultimate deadliness. The quasi-sentient birds are outfitted with appropriate quantities of void stones to have them breach the limits of the mundial plane.

That is until the Marukhati Heresy manifested on Mundus during the Oblivion Crisis. The planar barriers became even more unmalleable than with the Dragon Fires lit. To the Altmer´s sorrow this did not just shield Nirn from Oblivion´s ranks of Daedra but also barred the High Elves from building transliminal corridors to land or at least interact with their extramundic assets.

After the cats rejoin the Dominion due to the Void Nights, the Khajiiti Moonpaths enabled the Dominion to once again reconnect with their assets across the Void from former Eras. In turn this allowed them to occupy the ruined Imperial Province of Tatterdemalion, the dragon gods divine protection not extending beyond the limits of Nirn.

A plan for the conquest of Lorkhan´s sub-space was rejected by the military advisors of the Thalmor Administration nearly as fast as it out of some fool´s brainpan. Merkynd had learned from Reman of Cyrodiil´s foolishness. Nevertheless, with the Khajiit holdings as a starting point, Jone was quickly assimilated into the growing rule of the Dominion and the breeding of new Sun Birds could commence.

For there had been none left of the brilliantly feathered fleet. Daedric ire had descended upon them. No matter if from the frost of Coldharbour or the desolations of the Deadlands, the swarm of Sun Birds the Dominion of old had seen as their pride was no more. The Sixteen-Plus Princes of Tumult had judged themselves no longer subjected to the nymic oaths they had given The Cyrodiil during their first display of coalition since the Fall of Lyg in the previous kalpa.

„First mate of mates, report."

The sunreeve, a well bred Altmer asks upon unfolding from the collective of the multi-user exoform (where the souls and consciousness of the Altmer mananauts are stored when their bodies sleep or otherwise rest), as per protocol.

„Report: no divergence in status, sunreeve. The barriers these curs hide behind are still resisting the sun´s rain. Estimated of time until neutralization: three Nirn standard hours. Sunreeve Cerimviel put forth this prognosis at 0734. …"

Another Altmer, the malachite of his own glass armour not as finely stacked and maintained, finished before trailing off. He frowns while looking into the mirror-make.

„First mate of mates?"

„Sunreeve Aeme, I believe to have observed irregular dark spots in the mirror reflecting the neighbouring Aedra´s orbit. I propose having the mirror-make turn its receptors of radiance towards the sector for a fine-combed inspection. While this cluster is firmly Aedric, further outwards in the direction of the Lord and Mage constellations there are the Daedric Principalities of the Mehrunes, Clavicus Vile, the Revel-Prince of Debauchery and the Madspirit himself. They might have taken offence at our presence, or perhaps that of the Thrassians."

„So be it, in accordance with the most holy protocols of the Scroll of Prasix inform sunreeve Cerimvel of the window in the oculus-net we will leave open and then have the mirrors recalibrated post-haste."

The helm´s mer pronounces the mirror-makes nymic in harmony, their tonal-divergence minimal. It rotates and goes Logician, while the mirror itself warbles, the surrounding glass panels latch onto all shadows against the backdrop of the sun. Results are inconclusive to the Altmerality. Mara´s mercy hindering the seamlessness of the sunlight-flooding.

Still the mirror-make purrs, it seems to be happy to be used, or to be hit by new sunbeams. Whatever, none care.

"We are awake and knowing. Void-eyes on. Stare between Oblivion and Aetherius with purpose."

The first mate of mates states for the sake of following protocol.

Sunreeve Aeme´s gold eyes glare through his monocles which extend all the way back to the mirrors. Failure after having notified others of him acting beyond the limits of his orders displeased him greatly.

"Bring her out of Mara´s aura, and then we will be able to get a clearer reflection of the sun´s warnings of threat."

The first mate of mates into the tokbox following protocol:

"Notification of position change: TADSBA Windscepters leaving orbital flotilla for reconnaissance after suspicion of approaching threat from the arcs around Zenithar! I repeat suspicion of approaching threat from the arcs around Zenithar! Code of Authority as follows 032572648747."

The sunbird catches the solar winds ricocheting of off Mara´s aura in his solar sails. The gigantic bird lifts off, its blazing wings, which are not wings but mere reflections of light rays from the solar sails, rend the corona of Mara. The bird´s passage burning the clouds away into nothing in a blinding display of sunfire.

She shifts brilliantly in a flash. The tiny distance until she changes back into common spectrum is a testament to Altmeri design and the pilots skills. For the sunbird´s ego would have preferred to shift further, always further. They despise possipoints outside their kin´s embrace.

Now the mirror-make is send spinning again. With clear void around them it reflects well.

There!

A writhing shadow half behind Zenithar and Dibella, which circles Mara. The helm turns the optical lenses, images conjunct, additional sun-rays mingle towards a greater continuum of cognizance. Redirected from one lens of shimmerene glass to another the beams fall into the mirror from two sources. Both are reflected outwards. The first mate of mates calibrates the focus crystal and projects all causal agents in kaleidoscopic fashion onto the empty crystal walls of the bridge for all to see more easily, as his sunreeve has left for a glass of rich tasting wine from Auridon.

The superior Altmer comes back, in his glass gloved hand a cut crystal cup that catches the sunlight streaming through the bird´s egg´s interior. It isn´t singing, but the crystal of his glass is cut to warm the wine inside. He takes a sip, tasting before turning himself towards the horrors awaiting him on the wall.

"Mara´s mercy."

He moans, a breach of protocol and unbefitting his station. He´d have to give … "presents" out to the crew present at the time of his disgrace off. Otherwise he may be demoted for unbefitting conduct in face of enemy threat.

The reflection of a school of large half-discs with a broad rectangle attached to them is projected from the mirror. The bodies of the void-vessels are black with pulsing red veins across their surface. They are all edges and spikes, and war-arms. Some are batting away incoming asteroids on collision course, others are grabbing asteroids and shooting them forward as a sort of flak screen, while others again are pumping out orange ravaging pulses from their palms.

That´s how they move in void, sigil stones inside the void-vessels act as hyperagonal mediums causing a miniature but stable transpontine circumpenetration of the limen all the way into the distant plane of the Deadlands. Through these portals pure creatia, siphoned from the innumerable streams of lava across the realm, is pumped into mouldings, fuelling the cleaver´s engines.

"Hail them, and try to scrye their purpose in local existence."

The sunreeve after collecting his wits.

"My Sunreeve?! Protocol says I am to question your decision in such cases for clarification. Are you sure this is wise?"

"Acknowledged, first mate of mates. It is safe, no vital to confirm their intentions as soon as possible considering the vitality of our own. Dog´s they may be, but it wouldn´t be possible for them to not notice our local presence."

"Yes sunreeve. Initiate contract. Daedric notion iteration - pattern connection to the Daedric cleavers in our sight."

The first mate of mates orders the Dreamsleeve-thaumaturgists.

"The grid sequence is alright. Lane to Zenithar open. Conviction of authority by proxy is passing through." So exclaims the deputy of Dreamsleeve-thaumaturgists from his station.

"Set it up!"

The highest ranking Altmer present uncharacteristic screams are another reason for needing to bribe his crew for their silence.

"The decoy´s setup is alright. Now translating."

"The Oblivion Stream´s outer layer is wavering. Wave-type confirmed. It´s type BOB."

"Type BOB. Huh. this might get ugly. It all depends on luck now."

"Oblivion Stream´s outer layer stabilized. Rewriting cabal, entering second layer."

"Targets located, encoder primed for use. Your call sunreeve."

The other mer on the bridge tasked with communication in succession.

"Hailing the Daedroth in command of the squadron in the crafts of the Mehrunes Dagon. What is your purpose in defiling this void!?"

The sunreeve´s words are caught by the tokbox. From there memospores are phased into the Dreamsleeve and from there they emanate in form of sub-perception astral projection directly into the brains of the approaching Dremora.

A helm-mer stutters in disbelief.

"I can´t believe that Mehrunes lackeys came. His is the farthest principality since the destruction of the Fields of Reeze Mog at the hands of Boethiah?!"

Then suddenly: "aogroa3% ieag 00! 7654 ao*abr U+Uwbw!"

"A new dialect?!" He jokes nervously, feeling his former fears about the BOB type wavelength coming true.

"As if! It seems like you will need to return to the academia programmus solaris, first mate of mates."

The sunreeve rebukes him harshly, though his fears of being replaced are elevated.

"Hailing the commander of the vessels displaying the essence of the Mehrunes Dagon. We can't hear you. We see you flaring your Pyres of Devastation; please change the channel to open aetherial frequencies not in the bandwidth of your own war-souls! That is just common sense."

"owegull(veig)Zaor[v]aur/23owiaobvur skinba*g"

"We still cannot understand you! ... I must inform you that arcs around Aedric Mara are closed to enemies of the Altmeri Dominion. If you are unwilling or unable to speak to us, turn back or we will fire upon you in majestic ways."

The Altmer becomes more and more vexed, he isn´t used to Daedra not subjected to the behavioural filters of summons, which make them so compliant when called upon by mages until retromission.

"Could their flares be shadowed?"

Some random mer proposes.

"By whom? Those primitives from Zenithar? The lizard riders nearly all died out. And the hybrids only mind the soil they walk on."

The sunreeve discards the notion resolutely, approval emanates from the rest of the fifty plus crew members present on the bridge.

"Initiate search for counter-notions!"

The first mate of mates keeps a cool head between his long ears and chooses to dwell on the side of caution.

Aeme, miffed, contemplates if bribery might not be enough, his forehead´s ridge throbbing because of stress.

"Report: search for counter-notions in the Dreamsleeve is negative for the first seven layers of examination."

Aeme breaths in mollified.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

 **Meanwhile on the what-once-was-a-snowwhale/ actual**

Some of the crew snickered as they listened in to the aetherial chatter by means of coo. The little life-sized sparrow, moulded from a fine metal the colour of brass but as light as paper, automaton having been attuned to a broad range of soul-frequencies by Neloth some decades ago.

Each individual feather had been fashioned exquisitely and separately, and its eyes were garnets set in ovals of some darker metal. It comes with a locket and awakened under Talvas touch for the entertainment of the crew and a warning should their enemies become aware of their plot.

Hearing their talk, Melka croons happily:

„Krakakakakaka! To bind the emitters of the Dremora with expanding matrices of encryption carried on the boulders we hit them with, paid off."

„The Dremora, having little want to communicate with the elves, didn´t even think to look and wouldn´t notice by chance as they use flares to address each other, a method not studied by mortal races. While the elfin scum, would only look through the Dreamsleeve for flowing counter-notions, unable to tamper with the spells biding the voidcrafts of Mehrunes Dagon in actuality."

J´zargo explains to Mjoll, blue woad paint covering half her face, and some others who are interested enough but don´t know the specifics of their ploy.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

 **Back on the TADSBA Windscepter/ actual**

"Wait!" A mer who continued to watch the mirror screams out. "The rim of Dibella´s aura is but three stadions away from us. While there is no risk of a planar meld in the wanderings of the Aedra, could she mangle Daedric transmissions out of spite?"

"Report: incoming voidmatter!" Warns the mer on lookout suddenly in frantic manner, his notion projected through the tokbox from his chamber of adamantium atop the sunbird´s head.

A large asteroid was racing towards, threatening to crush the TADSBA Windscepter with its mass and rush forward to the position of the rest of the small flight of Dominion void-vessels laying siege to Mara.

With all their diviners and scrying spells directed beyond Dibella they had failed to perceive the approaching danger sooner.

A spore burst was send down to warn them of the quickly approaching threat, as per protocol, in case their lookouts had distorted corneas form too much void-gazing. The lone starcraft above, took evasive manoeuvres. Only minimal urging was necessary, getting out of the way was well compatible with the bird´s ego.

But hidden from their views of the possiponts, from the lime green cloud-sea of Dibella a sort of serpent made of twisting fog particles rises up. Its origin is the same as the asteroid on collision course, its mouth hidden behind the steadily advancing asteroid, until now when the sunbird stares with its bulbous eyes shining with a hidden sun directly into the long hollow within after having evaded the asteroid.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

 **Skyrim´s Void-Steed Cloudeater**

 **Heart-Chamber (directly below the Brain-Chamber)/ bygone**

A sound had arisen from inside the whale´s mouth into the endless interchanging melodies woven in harmony that passed beyond hearing into the depths and into the heights and the spheres were filled to overflowing, and the music and the echo of the music went out to the Void, and it was not void.

 **From now on still bygone but actual in flashback POW...**

"Curses! The storm is still lacking in strength, not ready! Not ready to lift us as fast as we wanted!"

Melka screeches from where she observes a tornado forming in an empty space of chamber, the tempest´s movement perfectly mirroring that of the cyclone-tendril outside.

"We will have to make do with it. I didn´t want to enter the cyclone-tunnel I shouted sooner in case they would be privy to it and throw up countermeasures. Now **, ALL PREPARING FOR TORNADO-STEP!** "

Following her forewarning, squalls race from the adjoining compartment Gullveig had retreated to, after unleashing her _Thu´um_. Subsequently the Tongue re-descends into meditation on her seat; at the end of the hall in front of the heart-chamber on a large stone dais, adequate to accommodate everything up to a dragon´s body in his entirety and cushioned by furs. It was the most securely built room in the interior the void-steeds termitarium, not for her own security, but for that of the crew should a powerful tongue, or _Dovah_ let them self be driven to speak out in uncontrolled tones. Thus many-layered swirls and totems cover the four walls, ceiling and floor, made in a single invocation of stahlrim, to disperse the unfocused force of a Tongue´s Voice. With this approach she wouldn´t obliterate the rest of the war-frame and inside-structure when laughing, snoring or crying out in ecstatic bliss in the occasions she isn´t gagged. Her breathing slows down quickly. She knows all and sundry are aware of what they have to do.

In front of the dais, floats a polished turquoise crystal sphere working as a LEXIS, able to stream the egos of the ninety-nine Falmer shamans as her proxies, whose souls had been transferred into it from soul gems, simultaneously.

Thoughts into notions translating sygaldry covered it, allowing her to use the shamans as a grimoire as well as allow her to establish logo-magnetic relays with all compatible artefacts within its reach (currently all of her void-steed). Just before she had used its ability for sametime-discussions to keep an eye on J´zagro. The face of her former co-student at the College of Winterhold, his whiskers quivering in open mirth due to the confused chatter from the Altmer starcraft and Daedric ships he still listens in to, is being displayed on the crystal in real-time.

"We enter the _Thu´um_! All hands brace for turbulence!"

This shout comes from Illia, her head dunked into one of the aforementioned auguries mounted on the chamber´s wall laced with perpetually revolving heartstones, used to re-enchant several parts of the warframe from weapons platforms, ammunition, jinx and ward emitters to the armour itself. She makes full use of the bewitchment junctions to broadcast her message into every corner of their void-vessel.

The hundred meters of armoured amalgam of snowwhales swims forward, its flippers batting away the storms in Dibella´s corona. Once its snout passes whirlwind-tunnel-road´s threshold, the whale is caught by the swirling motion and lets herself slingshot away from the Aedric plane. A move only made possible by the calming influence of the Quey on the whale-sow´s instinct.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

 **Bridge of the TADSBA Windscepter/ actual**

"My sunreeve! Report: we have a lock! A Nordic voidcrafts is advancing through the tornado!"

An womer shouts from her panel station, it´s a strange hermohedoric contraption of moonstone with several actuators to initiate systems, several levers, a proxy-synthetic homunculus of the bird, arrays and other parts of unknown function.

"Accursed heathens! Prim the sunbeam, we might not be in open war with the mongrels but I will not allow them to hinder our efforts!"

"Yes! My sunreeve!" The whole bridge crew in simultaneous choir.

"Sound the war flutes as per protocol to warn our compatriots within Mara, and relay a conviction back through Jone to Alinor that the Nords are in league with the Sloads!"

Aeme continues to declare his orders.

"Report: sunbeam rerouted from main engines, ready for firing."

"Can we get a clear target?"

"Negative, their propulsion is irregular, sometimes even negative. We can´t get a spatial lock on them even if we disregard the conductive coefficient of the vortex spell-craft they use as a passage."

"Warning of threat: our seers could prove that this vortex spell-craft not only will soon engulf our possipoint but also coax several lesser planes into its thrall. The seers expect an unknown quantity of voidmatter to impact on Mara in direct lane from us."

A message from the mer on the inter-bird-notion-lines .

"The fleet?! You are telling us they intend to bombard the fleet like that?!"

"Sound a general warning and relay our deductions to the flotilla ASAP! Warn our ground-troops as well, use all sineswaves! Even the defunct ones!"

"But Sir, if we do that the Sloads will listen in as well!"

"Let them!" The sunreeve shouts in near panic. "Those bastards will suffer under the orbital bombardment just as much!"

"Evasive manoeuvres!" He adds as if an afterthought.

The order is relayed through the reigns leading from the bridge inside the palanquin all the way to the sunbird´s brain below the lookout. But it isn´t followed through, while the sunbird tries and struggles the Windscepter is unsuccessful.

"Sunreeve, might the vortex be disrupting all solar draughts in the region?!"

Some random mer asks as they witness their vessel shaking.

Stunned silence spreads across the bridge. Then all together in uncontrolled, and not following protocol, tumult.

"Ready all anti-boarding measures!"

"How long till the sunbeam´s ready?"

"The barbarians will exit in 7...6..."

"Attention! I am flooding the interiors with low intensity aetherfire to ward against scrying attempts! All sailors don your monocles!"

"The combat troops are mobilized."

"Give them the order to raid the storage vaults for fire salts!"

"Run through the containment drafts! Where do we stop potential boarding parties."

"Can we scrye how many vessels they are deploying?" - "Negative, interference too strong to get a clear picture. Also they seem to huddle together to foil all our attempts." - "So they aren´t many?" - "Not in the first wave, but we don´t know how many are following behind or may be shielded against our divinations."

"...0"

What was spawned by the twisting vortex of atmosphere wasn´t an armoured snowwhale. Instead a wall of voidmatter appeared before them on collision course.

Again, stunned silence. Then ...

"Release the sunbeam." The sunreeve sighs, he almost sounds defeated.

"But Sir, then we cannot ..."

"Do you fancy being turned to void-dust, seared away to nothing by the plasm of our own Windscepter?"

"...No."

"Releasing sunbeam." This is the first mate of mates, nowadays also tasked with shooting their main weapon as the mer normally on this panel-station had fallen in the line of honour and duty a few days ago.

The TADSBA Windscepter opens her massive beak, and slightly rears back her neck. Like a bird ready to pin down its prey beneath it, and then quickly snap back out of it. But instead a strong shine erupts from the throat.

Then it bursts forth. The sunbeam, it crosses the distance between the sunbird´s head and the incoming asteroid in no time at all, searing through the layers of ice covering it and then deeply penetrating the rock before widening the beam´s scope to vaporize all of the incoming object.

It is a brave but ultimately futile effort.

From above the first asteroid another becomes visible, and another from the side, and another, and ... you know what I would write.

The Windscepter made herself narrow to avoid any asteroid but the one in front of her and dove towards the it. Already it was vaporized nearly in its entirety and the crew of the sunbird was jubilant.

But their good mood was cut short, abruptly. The faces of the long eared and gold skinned elves fell. Behind the first asteroid another had been hidden, now, because the rock in front of it had been slowed down through the light searing its body, it burst through stone and took the first ones place in bearing down on the luminous bird like an inescapable fate.

It was too close already, a quick calculation by the seers on the sunreeves question shoved that drained as the Winscepter was from days of aerial bombardment they could not reduce the second Void body´s mass quickly enough to escape death.

GAME OVER!

Or not?! From behind, another beam of light illuminates the darkness of the Void. It´s nothing but a flash and cannot be seen by the naked eye, no one but a single seer, who saw it happen in the future, noticed it until the beam conjoined with their own in a devastating attack.

Stone versus aetherfire!

Perhaps they would have won, probably even. But the potential result pales when compared to reality. For a ghostly shape phases through the void rock and sunbeam altogether, before hypothetical result could become reality. Once the ghost has cleared the Altmeri attack, the body shifts back into tangibility, a over 100m long armoured snowwhale with several boulders caught out of the Void fastened to its surface. It makes to bite down on the Windscepter´s front portion just as the _Thu´um_ ceased.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

 **Heart-Chamber of the Cloudeater/ actual**

After shifting back into tangibility, Melka murmurs to herself.

„Nocturnal didn´t smile upon us. While ethereal we lost a lot of air in our aura." Then louder. „We need to replenish the air inside our aura!"

„Then have Void-Treader blow its load!"

Huscarl Iona bites back, not wanting to bother her thane in the chamber behind her.

„Very well, my Lady Iona."

The Quey female acknowledged from above and reached out with her thoughts to the snowwhale´s ego streaming through the bones and fungal hyphea.

The void-whale purges its joy snow in geyseric fasion right into the sunbird´s face. The white stuff causing an ever expanding cloud to spread out around the two enemies which also serves to deter all probing rays the Brightspear sends their way.

But the cover is soon dispersed as the Brightspear shoots a low yield sunbeam at them, a bright stretch of aetherfire cutting through the void´s emptiness.

The crew of Skyrim´s oldest void-vessel flees below deck. J´zagro alone, cloaked in self-faith caused by moonsugar, withstands Brightspear´s withering flash-glare that has the whale´s skyforge armour sizzling and cooked some dozen unfortunate sailors still on the outside, heaven´s light slashing open their flesh. Until Gullveig throws up spinning hurling discs from her belly and Neloth shakes his nine-pronged-triangle-mirror staff at the two birds stunning them into momentary silence and compliance so the crew can come out again from any crevice they might have hidden in and get to work. Their attack now only truly begins.

The "Warrior Wench", using the Windscepter as a shield, advanced towards the flock of Alinorian birds. Beside them, is the Brightspear. The second bird had been harpooned, reeled closer and boarded by Borgakh´s battle-host, who were shot aboard in placentas hooked to the cables spanning between them. They now advance towards the bridge, fighting against the Altmeri troops, whose bodies are unfolded from the collective and materialized in synthesized bodies out of magicka directly in the path of Borgakh´s charging hammer. She had no pity and mercy for her distant kin behind the dark lenses covering her eye sockets.

In the meanwhile, J´zargo, still floating freely, has already taken out both lookouts, the mers´ corpses sizzling, but not because of the sun´s singe.

Inside the palace-like corridors, Borgakh strikes fast from above the kneeling Lob´s head. Her blow has the moonstone armoured grunt collapse, Volendrung sapping the last of his meagre strength. Ugor breaks ranks, uncaring of the dangers in her battlefury. With mighty swings she breaks into the breach of the Aldmeri shieldwall, trampling her fellow mer beneath her boots breaking his neck, finally ending his suffering and disgrace. She rams her shield into another, while breaking another´s fingers with an axe-blow. Yet, some unknown curse hits her from further back, to which she succumbs and falls retching her guts out.

Quickly Lob pulls her back by one of her armour´s belts into safety behind their own line of towershields, otherwise their comrade would have been killed here and there.

Meanwhile the Steel Heart kicks back some goldskin who wants to take advantage of the situation. Her following hammer blow smashed onto the ground, slick from spilled blood and puke. Another overly eager Aldmer had his face caved in from her swinging the Daedric weapon full circle.

Argis the Bulwark, charged with guarding his thane´s pity-wife, raised his shield in her defence. His throat, already sore from ripping weapons and magic from elfin hands with his shouting, is silent for once.

Like a Dremora of Dagon with nothing but destruction on its mind she threw herself at the front of her charging horde into the breaking Aldmeri ranks. As lightning bolt strikes her and it is stopped by the subtle enchantments shielding her from all forms of magics. Any lucky strike of a blade that finds its way through her armour is stopped by her ebon flesh, applied on her by the mages behind them the flesh spell blinks into the visual spectrum when triggered.

Even the dazzling light and heat cannot deter, the valiant warriors. Their armours have been strengthened with cooling slag, more than dimple dirt, it is a valuable byproduct of metal forging, mottled and crumbing with different mineral deposits. Not only does it impart a healthy disregard for heat and flames in all forms but also improves her ability to wound and banishes weariness.

Heads get squashed, bones broken and guts spill out of ripped open bellies onto the once pristine floor with a great *squelch* as the physically superior warriors under Borgakh´s command butcher the foremost ranks who valiantly lay down their lives so the mages and commanders can cowardly flee the lost battle.

Once the bloody affair is over, Borgakh stands upon a small sea of red blood and viscera. Her gaze searches for the still ones of the fallen, and she finds gold skinned faces everywhere, so much like her own since the schism following the disappearance of Malacath that tore apart Orsinium in a bloody civil war, look right back at her, unseeing.

Another team is worming their way through the Windscepter´s corridors, seeking to take control of her as well. The defenders break their ranks on Mjöll the Lioness with Jenassa and Teldryn Sero dancing and weaving between Chillrend´s biter bites. The two Dunmer spellswords have been bestowed with manifold sorceries to further hide them, deaden the sound of their voices, their scent, the life force in them. It had exhausted the mages, and they still hadn't been certain it would be enough, but the Altmer have visible problems perceiving their positions.

Together they spearheaded a contingent of mages and shield-biters. The wasabi making the veteran "Cloaks" frothing at the mouth and twitching in barely restrained need to move. Behind their ranks, lesser mages carry around crates of vampire dust, of which they sprinkle some onto the warriors and themselves before them whenever necessary. The grinded down bloodsuckers cause them to blink into invisibility and restore their magicka reservoirs, which is good as they need to use restorals frequently due to being harmed by the showy lights and sounds of the Altmer mages, which act like lesser cloak spell on occasion.

Neloth´s proxy-heartstone-automaton was with them too, the old Telvanni mage lord wanting to study a sunbird before its destruction. Like with Borgakh´s team their sight-lenses are tinted dark to shield the eyes of the invaders against the flood of light the Altmer ha released inside their birds to ward off scrying and invaders. They did so by bringing up the sun-song to two-hundred-eighty-one. The intensity of the light is now just below the threshold where folk of their race would be harmed by prolonged exposure as well.

But even so, it is still rising.

Soon they would breach Mara´s slipstream, so J´zargo levitated the cables and attached harpoons back to the Dragonborn´s Void lair, otherwise they would be lost in the storms of the border realm.

"Warrior Wench" flips her flippers and a cavity opens up, a calm path through the slipstream. They plunge before the Dragonborn shouts them into ethereality again, her Voice recovered from the previous strain put on it because of deep meditation on the Greybeard´s teachings of the Way.

This measure has been taken in the nick of time, as four majestic beams streak back towards the sun and through the possipoint they occupy momentarily. The sky lights up in Old Mary´s glory!

Neloth curses loudly over this development aboard whale´s corpse and the safety of his corner of the heart-chamber, which he had used the Telvanni stone-beetle hive, an insect race reared from specimen taken from Malacath´s Ashpit, onboard to dig out and built up for him.

And indeed, the sun-song of the Windscepter jumps in height and thus the singe inside of the egg´s corridors in intensity. Immediately the Stormblade urges old Neloth to prepare for an emergency recall of all troops on the enemy bird threatening to blow up. The Telvanni mutters how it is wasted time, seeing as the "Warrior Wench" is still intangible and the thus rescued aren´t and that they would fall right through the floor, but seeing her unrelenting will he gives in. He walks over to an adjacent propylon chamber, the only open space where he can summon that many people back at once, and does the necessary selection of soul and respective spell bindings connecting the person in question and the pre-prepared spell´s anchor in the chamber.

When the Windscepter flashes apart, Erandur, Illia and others are already working on the boarding host´s various wounds and burns.

The Altmer, down below in their bright birds, are frolicking till shrieks rend the sky.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

 **TADSBA Brightspear, bridge/ bygone**

Altmer blood fills the floor and it sloshes when Borgakh or one of hers takes a step. Her warriors are already looting the corpses strewn between the panelstations, those are ruined, as they had surmised the Altmer had destroyed them manually in hope of keeping their advanced magitech out the Pact´s growing repertoire.

But that doesn´t bind the Orsimer´s attention while she leans on Volendrung, the green hammer propped against the floor so she could use it as a crutch to rest her weary body. The still unbearable glow filling the structure doesn´t concern her much either. Her concern is the same as Argis´, well, the Nord has partly the same concern she thinks as she watches him catch his breath after his fierce war-cries in battle.

Anyway, the concern they did share is waiting, one for her wife, and the other for his thane.

Before the two Onmund had laid down a magitek contraption. Several panels of unknown material each holds a charged soul gem, each panel is connected to two others through energies crawling over the crystal floor and swimming together to form glyphs unknown to the two warriors.

Finally the formation aligns with its twin on board of the Cloudeater, and Gullveig steps from the fused possipoint, both the formations insides are now one, onto the Brightspear´s bridge in overt joy.

The blood coating her face in mimicry of an upright double headed axe or hawk in flight and the crimson ends of her hero braids, which fall down on her lower back on top of the dark fur coat, held together by a gold broche, she wears over a masterfully crafted stahlrim cuirass, as well as greaves and boots of the same make, all of them fastened on even more pelts worn on top of an ebon-weave that covers all of her body. Each of the pelts inlaid with runes unmentionable and unreadable, thus they cannot be shown here.

The tall Nord woman reaches out and pulls the two members of her hirth to her bosom, embracing them before giving her congratulations and thanks to Onmund for his timely setting up of the fusion spell. A nod and smile nothing more. For she has oh so few words available, those close to her understand very well.

„All of you! Well done! But now, close your ears, shut your peek-holes and let me do my part!"

" ** _GOL-HAH!_** "

And so she shouts with a dragon´s storm, after giving her warning. The Brightspear immediately bows towards her insides. Bend and cowed as she is, she thinks all well with the new crew ordering her to throw herself into battle against her sisters in nature.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Once the flash disperses the the Aldmer crew´s fell their mouths slack in astonished despair. From above where they thought to have brought destruction, comes a lengthy whale, crewed by their long since hated and fated enemies. Vast does its maw open, like a nightmarish pit of Vaermina´s make, as bloodcurdling shouts echo from inside it and the first scaled-terror-beast-in-flight takes departure. The great wyrm, scales tinted crimson and blue/grey, trains his slit gold eyes on the closest enemy of his _thuri_ , and descends upon the hapless bird in endless coils of unsinging scales.

Great granite like claws rend open apart the bird´s upper back as the dragon perches on her shoulders. As the force-fields are being overpowered, a sound like glass breaking spells out doom to the defenders. Scintillating luminescence streams down as the liquid flesh of the Altmer-make leaks out through the breach of her skin. The red tail whips about and crushes the sun sails, which look like insect wings because of their many gems making it look like facets, in its churning coils. The banners, the many banners caught fire from two sources and the ropes they were attached to trail behind the Evershield in the wind enslaved by the dragon´s wings. Having crushed all means for the bird to eat the sun´s light, the long tail ropes around one wing thus causing the sunbird, who needed her wings to keep herself in the air when subjected to the aura of a plane, to fall towards the unforgiving ground. Finally sword-teeth pry open the undulating meat on the bird´s chest, so … could feast on the liquid sun light which streams down into the dragon´s dark gullet and over his scales in bright golden glory.

While the fall of the TADSBA Evershield was without a doubt a heavy loss for the Altmeri crewing the three remaining sunbirds, their perils were far from over. Re-gathering his wits first, Sunreeve Nuulethel tasks his first mate of mates with coordinating the remaining TADSBA Highlady, TADSBA Crystalarrow and his own bird the TADSBA Skyhonour in their just retribution against their vile enemies. Order returned promptly to the astonished mer, their superb training and centuries of life experience made them able to overcome the despair that would have befallen lesser beings and made them flee.

Sometimes bravery is the lesser virtue compared to fear.

An elfin arrow, polluted with the blood of a Daughter of Coldharbour, whizzes past the mer and their birds unseen, and the sun above Mara shrinks back into a tight outline as if in fright. Like a beating heart, it pulses. Then something-as-if-blood blots the celestial light out altogether in weird concentric birthing spasms. The unnatural occurrence makes the scathing halos of the sunbirds pale, their proud jewel like glow nothing more than bits and bobs of a glimmer.

Shields of stahlrim unbolt on the "Warrior Wench" and exhibit arcane contraptions centred around large soul gems, who fuelled by the magicka wells begin an unrelenting bombardment. Lightning surges, boulders and winds of frost rains down on the Altmer void-vessels, who respond by glowing.

While the less arcane inclined crew members run around exchanging burst soul gems or cleaning the wells harvesting magicka from star light in prisms of meteoritic bras coloured iron, the fully fledged mages remaining on the void whale stand on its back and swing staves in unison, fielding great spells in a rare display of cooperation.

All for naught as the Altmer´s defences held firm, their bright glow dissolving incoming spells easily and also made them able to evade incoming bolides, reeled in telekinetically from "Warrior Wenche´s" mage continent, after reducing their size greatly.

During the standoff, the Altmer worked on their counter offensive tirelessly. The TADSBA ´s Highlady, Skyhonour and Crystalarrow moved into formation behind each other facing the Cloudeater, Cearcestis Ladder Manoeuvre, the sunbird at the front then concentrated on defence, her glow growing stronger as the sun song´s melody was hastened and the sunbeam´s flow kept redirected in a broad static half ball which shields the three sunbirds from incoming spellcraft. Behind the Crystalarrow´s shield, but a bit beside her, the Skyhonour and Highlady prepare the Altmer´s metaphorical spear of attack. The TADSBA Highlady channels her radiance into the Skyhonour, Nuulethel having reserved the honour of the Cloudeater´s destruction for himself, who in turn redirects her whole sunbeam from the engines into a concentrated shot at their enemies. At the same time the Crystalarrow and Highlady, who pushes the Skyhonour forward, begin to advance, as they are trying to enter aura with the "Warrior Wench", where they hope to defeat the whale in close combat, there the Nord´s ability to turn intangible would be less of a boon so their prognosis.

Then the Brighspear appears, the captured bird throws herself in the sunbeam´s path right in time to protect the Nord´s finest void-steed and unleashes her counter-solar-attack to bleed of the additional energy which would rise the sun song´s singe beyond what her current crew could comfortably stomach.

Amid the blazing sky, where a new sun seemed to have went up for the duration of the aerial battle, the Dragonborn races towards her own prey, intangible once more on _Durnehviir_ ´s bony neck, whom she had called into battle from the murky depths of the Soul Cairn. There she whispered into his rotting ears, promises of feasts, riches and glory among their shared kin for what would happen next.

His otherworldly _Thu´um_ , washing over the hulls of the TADSBA Highlady and Skyhonour makes reality tear open purplish portals. Hosts of Soul Cairn undead literally bleed out from them as the laws put in place by Akatosh against large scale Daedric intervention in Nirn´s matters don´t apply to Mara. Towering graveyard keepers, Nord veterans of the ancient Dragon War, clad in dragonbone armours immediately begin hacking at the hulls, while the wrathmen and mistmen, les confident in their destructive capabilities, climbed along the flaming outside layers of the sunbird and either slaughtered their way into their insides or cut apart their ocular faculties. They were but moths to the flame, as many died from the singe, but were some fell others took their place and finally the flame was extinguished by the moths clinging to it, the birds overrun.

The TADSBA Crystalarrow´s crew see their comrade´s demise from within the bridge, and even Crystalarrow, with sorrowful rage reflected in her flashing, scintillating eyes watches impotently how her brood-sisters, grown by well breed Altmer from spun sunlight in pools of liquid sunlight, which was made by bundling together and condensing sun rays through mirrors, that is what merkynd and mankind calls creatia in action, are being stained.

This transgression screamed for divine punishment and within Crystalarrow grew the need to exact it herself. But alas, the mortals playing around at commanding her intend to flee the battle now that victory isn´t assured or likely. No such course could be permitted, what did she care for destruction of her material shell? She was pure sunlight caught in this form by mirrors and enticing prayers, which she had found oh so pleasing.

Would Crystalarrow had stayed and fought? Who knows? Perhaps the incessant tucking at her reigns would have convinced her? None know, none would think of asking her. Either way, as the Altmerality´s voices made itself known from the tokbox and ordered the Crystalarrow to regroup with the approaching 3rd armada, which was dispatched upon report of hostilities by the Windscepter was tasked with evaporating the Nord´s ace vessel and its commander, the fabled Dragonborn, the Crystalarrow tears herself away from the blasphemy before her eyes and transcended through the slipstream into the Void with _Durnehviir_ giving unrelenting chase.

Meanwhile, back beneath the slipstream of Mara. Protected by glamour Hraesvelgr, of the ruddy long folk of Atmora, cloaked in a winged and feathered cloak eagle feathers, takes an eagle´s guise to carry a war-host placed in isolating placenta-cocoons over to the Skyhonour where Thane Gullveig is locked in fierce battle against Sunreeve Nuulethel´s remaining moonstone and malachite clad soldiers.

At the same time the "Warrior Wench" closes in behind powerful wards to deflect random rays of light, some intense enough to harm the armour, others meant to bring into actuality soldiers of the Aldmeri Dominion on the snowwhale´s hull so they may assault the enemy vessel just as they were and still are assaulted. The fresh forces decided the tide of battle and soon the Skyhonour will fall to convincing _Thu´um_ as did her kin.

Not far away, the Highlady and Brightspear are locked in fierce battle as well, with flapping wings and claws on thin feet scratching each other. The Brightspear, ridden by Borgakh and her host naturally is fated to be defeated in such a battle, lacking experience in handling a sunbird and destroyed support-faculties in the bridge are too great a difference even if the other was overrun by spectres from the Soul Cairn until she raised her glow enough.

By now _Odahviing_ had returned to the high airs as well, he had caused the bird he had assaulted on the Sload´s coral dome as instructed, yet looking down Gullveig Stormblade saw it nearly undamaged, and then he had thrown himself into bloody combat against the Deadric and undead hordes swarming the plane, spawned from hastily raised Oblivion gates.

„BAL`S CURSED LOT _THURI_! I PLAYED A BIT WITH THEM AND SEE HOW MUCH FERVOR THEY SHOVED IN STRICKING ME DOWN!"

The old _Dovah_ seems to motion to the blotches of wind smeared blood that coated his scales. Then the air weeps under the force of his words again, carrying them to his master inside the bird of light.

„WITHOUT PAAL ABOVE, SHOULD I RETURN TO GRAH DOWN BELOW?!"

„Nay, await **_DUR-NEH-VIIR_** ´s return, until then, subjugate the glowing chickens."

The soldiers of the first Altmeri rank fall to the ground bleeding from their ears and shouting in pain, soon to be dead. The second rank is deafened, and they remained so until the corpses of their comrades fell on them having been reanimated by the necromantic meaning within the dragon´s name.

Thus _Odahviing_ , the World-Eater _Alduin_ ´s former second in the dragon-flight, preys on the Highlady, smothering her protective halo with storms.

Immediately the mages on the Void-steed see their chance and with their spatial perception of the near sunbird accurate enough they deconstruct, teleport and re-manifest several boatcarls as a boarding party in the gaping wounds of the Highlady.

War-son of the _Dovahkiin_ , Erik the Slayer meets the first Altmer to appear before him with a crushing blow of his dragonheaded-warhammer of ebony. Sinmir moves past him to block bolts compact aetherfire with his shield, fired by enemy reinforcements. A shield wall is assembled, Stenvar, Vorstag, Benor, Ralof, Eisa Blackthorn and her long time friend Ra´jirr, Kharjo (a cat Thane Gullveig had once done a service for which put him in her debt), Fjola meet and strike at the Altmer as they flash into actuality while Belrand of Solitude and the High Elf Nelacar supported them from behind with their diverse magicks. Storm atronachs surge forth from their stahlrim confines and clad in a hail storm encircled the Altmer force, killing them quickly in a cloud of hail and lighting before returning to their realm. Nothing is left behind but bodies roasted and steaming.

And so the battle for the Highlady enters its last chapter.

While the clash of arms over the Highlady draws to a close, on the Skyhonour Gullveig of Atmora has been the Nords only feet on the bird until now. His feather cloak already nearly burning, Hraesvelgr deposits the cocoons in his talons on the sunbird and quickly takes off again. He actually does not manage to get back to the "Warrior Wench" and needs to be Onmund pull him out of the Void.

Hardly having hit the ground, blades cut open the placenta and warriors emerge. Mjöll the Lioness, Uthgerd the Unbrocken hurry to raise their blades together with their shield-sister and the huscarls to the thane of Skyrim push against the onslaught of moonstone armoured enemies racing across the bird´s rear body standing on stirrups attached to revolving wheels. Rayya´s twin sabres at the ready to flash out and carve up flesh wherever enemy combatants manage to threaten the oval of shields made by Jordis the Shieldmaiden, Iona, old Valdimar and Argis the Bulwark.

Scraps of sea silk, pieces of the mer´s clothes float by lazily, some bear blood or whole body parts in their wraps.

Seeing their advance, Nuulethel immediately redirects the efforts of his soldiers. Wrong-eyed alien murderthirst burned within gilded eyes as they rise into the Void on winged shoes that manipulate inertia along given vectors, just like their own wheels, to cut them off from rejoining their sister and thane. No one cares for the Septim´s ban of levitation magic anymore.

When they finally reach the Dragonborn, Wuuthrad is already coated crimson in its entirety, a battered corpse hooked upon one of its blades as an arrow catcher. The heavy shield of Ysgramor is slung on her hunched back, and her laboured breathing sounds like an animals from the exertion of the massacre she performed on the high elves. The weave of her ebony garb are loosened though being of god´s blood and she´s red all over.

She holds herself in midair on wheels attached to her ankles, some distance from the a wound she had eaten into the Skyhonour´s skin, golden ichor leaking from the breach the Altmer try to quickly seal up again.

Quickly the huscarls form a protective ball around their mutual thane and the shield-sisters bring her relief in form of various potions.

After a short breather for everyone to catch their bearing, both sides stalling for time, the awful fighting begins again.

Hexes and disenchanting-charms impacted on their shields, hoping to strip them away of all protection. But at Mjöll´s outcry time settled into a crawl for Gullveig to redraw the spells´ mien and unravel it at its seams.

From the corner of her eyes she sees some mages conjure beings from pagodas built upon complicated mandalas probably newly drawn up by spellwriters from Alinor. Their summons invisible but for the distortion they leave behind in the shine of the bird. From within the translucent body she sees choirs repeat mantras with meanings unknown. The whole situation so absurd she could not help herself but to laugh like a madwoman.

Her own kin break away fearing for their lives into the Void for they knew what is to come. The giggling made most everyone perish that forlorn day.

Half woven spells dissipate as their casters stop in their lives. Fire, if it could be called that, pounded up when armours hit. The soldiers belched out all of their eating and their gorge made pea-green steam of the world around, buckling down in death. Once finished the Stormblade is on all fours straddling Nuulethel´s rend chest and listening to his fading heartbeat, a sound which is unperceivable beside her own giggling at theatrics that make sense to her alone in the growing pool of intestines and life-water. A large crimson blob beneath the crumbling crystal arches of the palanquin´s corridor. An image rounded up by the chirping of the claxons, a warning of impending implosion, long after all the bird´s crew had perished under her unstoppable charge.

With the Skyhonour lost to the Void, but the Highlady in their possession now, her AE shaken by a dragon´s tongue, the warriors of the north prepared for planefall.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"Transfer all available battle forces from the Warrior Wench into the fuckin´ birds, and prepare us for surface-to-air combat."

This order sounds through the chambers of the Cloudeater in the Lioness´ voice as she connects to the whale´s auguries from a leather satchel filled with the same dissimilarity-bridging-liquid. The Nords and their allies are now shifting their definition of enemy from sunbirds and Altmer to Daedra and their collaborators. The surface of Aedric Mara is about to become soaked in blood.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

 **Highlady/ actual**

Mjöll looks up from the animal pouch she had just spoken into to relay orders to the Cloudeater. Her gait is still shaky as she rejoins the others and their effort to do her part in readying everything for the next battle. Her shield-sister Gullveig is nursing everyone's wounds, as she is doing with Benor´s broken arm right now, with Iona and Jordis at her side. The two are probably still as shaken as she is herself and won´t have the luxury of actually being on another bird when those will soon go downwards, crossing over into the Brightspear together with their thane using the spatial-fusion-formations connecting the two.

Uthgerd on the other hand is outside on the improvised flight deck. She is overseeing the transfer of troops to the Highlady just as Argis is doing on the Brightspear. Of the sunbirds gathered to put an end to the Sload´s excursion beyond the Void and onto Mara only those two and Crystalarrow, due to having fled, remain alive.

She wonders for how long.

But she has more real concern for herself, and her kin. Because as she looks over the edge down below she can already see the dark mass crawling out from portals reaching all the way to Coldharbour. Colossal titans, cold fire atronachs and other monstrosities are infesting the ground with so many of the miserable soul shriven to back them up that the natives will probably think it another one of Peryite´s blights threatening their land as the other Daedric Prince had done so often in the past.

 **Surface of Mara´s crust. We are within a dark and damp building of some sort, at least there is only very little light. Slime infested water covers most of the floor/actual**

The air is very humid and to the licking of the voluminous Sload´s body that floats in a pool further in the back. At least "the back" seems to be an apt description, the centre of the super structure clearly defined by a single ray of light piercing the veil of shadows. On the water´s surface hit by the light, images of an aerial battle between dazzling birds and the riders of a whale´s corpse are displayed. The Sload set up this piece of magecraft to observe what happens above, in the higher regions of the plane he currently finds himself in.

Soon the battle would be over, and then the triumphant Dragonborn would descend onto Mara. Drunk on victory she would not care for the Daedra visible, those he didn´t manage to hide anymore. Like her air borne kin she would fail to see the menace directed at her which coagulated into this moment. Or perhaps she does?

He is certain that the leak informing the Crystal-like Throne of Alinor of his studies here cannot be traced back to Sload manipulation, but the hidden assets of Skyrim in Zenithar make it seem as if the Nords are playing their own game.

Indeed the Sload warcaster is well aware of the hidden and approaching fleets. After several planar-cycles his detection and sensor net stretches across all of the Void between the eight attendant Aedra and beyond into the innumerable principalities of the Daedric Princes and the less renown worlds under the sectors their dominate. The dark starlight waters within his dome a micro-rendition of the Void enveloping the Aedra.

At first there had been dissent among the Vizirs on his proposal of choosing Mara as ground for their undertaking. Not only is her wavelength too close to that of Dibella and Zenitha, and thus there existed a non calculable risk of intervention by third parties but the threat of complete dimensional collapse had also been brought up.

After all to fuel the growth of his corals he had to tap into the plane´s nucleus. Adding the resulting destabilization of the core-heart´s pod to the damage the soon to be battle will cause to the outer layers may very well result in Mara´s destruction or at least long time maiming. The effects this would have on Nirn and Tamriel´s myth specifically cannot be measured.

Already he can feel slight pulses of several reverberating epicentres in the plane´s aura caused by meteorites, bolides and what not impacting with her.

In the end he had gone along with his plan without the specific approval of his elders. For no matter the risks, while Mara has only half the circumvention of Zenithar, her fertile spirit is key to his experiments success.

But in the end he can do nothing to react to the newest information. What could be done has already been done. The lord of Coldharbour would not retreat his forces anymore, he was too invested, looked down in battle with the plane´s inhabitants to the east as his forces are. Not to mention his ire would be great should the Dragonborn escape his wrath after the numerous transgressions she committed against him.

Tired of the wait he opens and closes his broad mouth. A "ploohp" echoes under the dome. It´s some Sload custom.

His gaze sweeps across the fog covered surroundings, the water around him being cooler than the one covering the lower platforms. The air has a familiar stench to it, one of decay, rot and sweet foulness that his kind prefers. With a mental nudge he commands his necromantic slaves to go over all the preparations again. For a 32719th time.

It would not do for the water to not have the correct temperature for him to raise his creations quickly because they needed too long to start up, nor for his living slaves to take their lives from his arsenal by killing themselves...

He stretches part of his thoughts into the maggot infested Khajiit guarding the wide assortment of beings the Daedric Prince had gifted him with, some came from Nirn and its eight attendants, others from beyond, realms unknown to the mortal races of Tamriel.

They will all become sacrifices for his ambition!

Risking a glance she observes the hordes of Coldharbour concentrating their forces down below to meet them in battle, while half feral soul shriven swarm uncontrolled across the lands to the north-east probably has the natives believe that Peryite has struck at them with yet another blight. For some reason he and the Prince Vaermina have an unusual interest in this realm, the latter´s presence is so interwoven into the fabric of Mara that all its folk ventures into the Prince of Nightmares ever changing realm in their sleep.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

 **Surface of Mara, from the POW of some random Dremora looking up in anticipation/ bygone to actual**

You choked a bit on the dust the nearest meteor has thrown into the air and by the sounds he neither was the last to hit near him and the other subordinates of his Kynreeve, well Kynreeve for the moment. You had firm intent to replace him after this battle has been won. Until mere hours ago you didn´t think it possible that such a chance could come by in a battle against mere mortals, even if they are led by one of the humanoid incarnations of the Aka.

Though you wondered what kind of mad-mortal she must be to dare attack a force such as this, now you do know. If she counted on being able to bombard them from the air as she did with these bothersome boulders torn from the Void she would have been unpleasantly surprised. For already the hastily reconfigured screening flak, before that their long range weaponry had been needed to be hidden from the Altmer´s aetherfire beams, and Titans were ameliorating the meteor showers effects by destroying the majority of the incoming rocks actually threatening their positions.

Several others did crater themselves further away, perhaps sending some miserable weak soul shriven back to Coldharbour early.

You looked a bit around you bored from the wait, you and your cohort were just told to sentry the camp and if necessary give aid to the mages finishing the setup of some of the bulky concentric tubes of the twice-critical high velocity Azure Plasm accelerator projectile launcher. The others, people of the famous Deathbringer clan just like yourself were already restless with anticipation for a good fight. Sure, their pose is still as always but their wavelengths didn´t lie.

Another meteor impacted some distance away, another tsunami of dust followed by a tremor. Somewhere behind you one of the Dremora cursed, probably the tremor had offset his work.

All that soon turned irrelevant. It all began with two glowing points in the midday sky you saw only because most of those around you grew quiet and began looking up one after another. They grew bigger very fast and before long are more like two additional twin suns than stars and your first thoughts that those were just another pair of larger bolides vanishes as you now begin to recite all curses known across the Wastes of Oblivion you have learned in the millennia you were alive. You had finished saying "Oblivion take you" and are begin with "... with a fighting ability eternally not above that of stunted Scamps" when the atmosphere changes within a moment.

No longer does the stench of ozone come over from the cannons and no longer does any dust fly around the area. A single brutal heat reminding you of one of your deaths in the Deadland´s lava pools swallows up the area in a ground searing flash.

You don´t even see the earth turning to ash and glass over.

In fact it isn´t even such a bad death you ponder as your soul awaits reincarnation in the waters of Coldharbour while they construct your next vessel. It was quick, clean and didn´t embarrass you in any way. However for one thing you curse the mortals - the wait will be long till it´s your turn!

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

 _Durnehviir_ and _Odahviing_ , after having finished escorting the birds of light, fly strafing runs across the plain and ravines dotting the landscape beyond the immediate regions destroyed during the fiery crash of the Altmer void-vessels. Soon prey their own size roars at them in defiance of their until then undisputed rule of the skies of Mara.

Grievous Twilights, once Winged Twilights from Azura´s realm of Moonshadow until Bal had drowned them in the pits of Azure Plasm in Coldharbour and remade in Daedroth´s image. Their humanoid forms rise up into the air on dark purple and sinewy wings, their hands already sprouting icy flames as they weave fire and destruction into large firestorms.

Their efforts are disregarded by the two _Dovah_ , who instead seek out prey on their own. Prey who all to willingly faces them.

Daedric Titans answer their challenging thunderblasts. Abominations made in mockery of _Dovah_ above after the Lord of Misrule´s interrogation of _Boziikkodstrun_ had proven fruitless. And while their prehensile frontal limbs gave them a clear advantage if they manage to close range, neither ancient wyrm has any intention to let them.

The Titans´ oral spells of flaming essence-drain, which can debilitate opponents with a single word, are drowned in the storm clouds spoken into existence by the Snow Hunter, who strikes and retreats into them just as quickly. Like a curse on their kin he emerges from the cover of the clouds and pounces on each Titan mauling them to death and returning into the shrouded skies before the others can convene on him.

He proves them to be mere imitations of the dragon´s glory, for even when plans and traps are hatched against him under the guidance of the Twilights, his aim is unerring, and his escapes unstoppable.

Either fake images of the red dragon spring into existence or he simply phases through the blockade of flying Daedra. Sometimes he just ploughs through their ranks without fearing nor sustaining injury or turns allies upon one another. The mastery of his _Thu´um_ proves above their efforts and the champions of Molag Bal come face to face with the inevitable truth that they can do nothing but hope ... for what they do not know.

And while _Odahviing_ proves his skills with cunning strategies and follow up manoeuvres, the eternal guardian of the Soul Cairn has no such tastes for finesse.

The first Titan that came close to him as he separated from his _zeymah_ and _briinah_ and moved further south, he send crushing down to the Aedra´s skin buried under a score of wrathmen who had pierced his wings and gouged out his eyes. And he continued to do so until the minions of the King of Rape got wiser and stayed out of the range of his summoning shout.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

 **Flash forward to now, same battlefield/ actual**

The Titan hasn´t been dead all that long. His body, once brimming with supernatural strength and vitality, now is smeared shattered on the dirt of Mara. Just like all too many of his brothers. When they saw those in whose image they had been created by their master, envy and deep rooted malice had them throw themselves at the shards of the Time Dragon. They rose up and were send down in a wild tumble back to the ground.

Struck from the skies, made to crawl among the Dremora and Banekin on the ground for the last moments of their current life like maggots.

A sound.

A sound reaches his dead ears, he cannot place it.

But it touches something inside of himself, his soul! Until now it had slowly shed his corporal body and would have continued to wander to the Waters of Oblivion undisturbed and receive a new vessel there.

But now its transmission has been interrupted, and it has been taken hold off. An unshakeable grip returns it to his/my body.

And now, woken once more, I return to the battlefield on the orders of the master!

The Titan´s eyelids flash open. There is no life held within his orbs but that doesn´t matter. He already has transcended even those few laws still applicable to Daedric entities and entered undeath.

With a rasp of useless lungs he regains mobility of his limbs and raises himself from the dirt his vessel slept on. With his next move he penetrates some Foolkiller clansman with his claws and has the corpse dangle from his digit. And he will repeat that until his body just cannot hold his soul anymore, having become nothing but scraps.

Meanwhile, in the clear skies above, _Durnehviir_ watches on. Ever since entering the service the Ideal Masters had tricked him into he never had the chance to truly flex his newfound abilities he had traded in his liberty in for. Pride and the laws of Mundus keeping him from displacing whole armies from the Soul Cairn into battle and raising the freshly fallen with but a whisper of his power.

Tyranny over the soul!

And so he watches. He observes with fascinated eyes, tears of green putrid ichor streaming from them that drops down to the ground far beneath him, as the ever growing legion of undeath under his command surged and wavered outwards, pushing against living and breathing enemies.

Once he had been a contestant for the rule over the skies of Ald-Mora and _Keizaal_ , and now _Qahnaarin_ granted him another chance for glorious battle.

Battle!

Conquest!

Domination!

His _dovahsos_ , or _dovahsil_ as the former is in fact lacking within him, writhed and surged violently within him. Something primal awakened, a feeling that he had lost in the countless ages he had spend cooped up under the yoke of the Ideal Masters.

A _Dovah_ ´s deepest instinct! Now unleashed after eons of tranquillity.

With a air rending roar he throws himself back into battle. Acidic spittle flies from his frothing maw as some unfortunate Twilight finds rotting teeth the size of a armoured Dremora deeply penetrating him. Half of him quickly rejoins the bloodied ground while the other half somewhere gets lost in the half there belly of the drake.

His roars of destruction race across foe and thrall alike, making the ground groan in agony. On Mara´s crust, peppered by bolides dying in fiery explosions and meteoroids, another scar joined the others.

His bony tail swats some things away without regard for their identity, and carves a deep fissure into the dust, while he squashes a group of small purple Banekin in his talons that wanted to use frost on him from all magiks possible. Their squishy innards made a pleasing sound to his ears before he takes flight again and uses their remains between his claws as improvised projectiles to hit some Dremora mages preparing to launch one of their warmachines, yet they do nothing but splatter against some hastily raised anti-matter wards.

He battles, he shouts and he enjoys himself! His laughter, a series of mad wails of joy, only interrupted when some Caitiff somehow managed to spear himself on his openly displayed bones.

Shaking off his bout of battlefrenzy, he reminds himself why he choose to delve into the ways of _Alok-Dilon_ all these years ago. Once again, after quickly speaking of ethereality to evade the blast of the Daedric cannon, he changes his way of battle.

Mental commands stream out to his thralls, he swatted away some feeble attempts at usurping his minions and ordered ten of the nearest Titans to guard him while he sets about to have the Cairn spill its guts out onto this realm of Mundus to meet the legions of Coldharbour in pitched battle.

That is his calling, to see his enemies driven before him by the mettle of his slaves, to lord over a army and direct them in battle.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

 **Battle on Mara**

Wriggling white maggots are crushes underneath armoured boots as the warrior-horde of Thane Stormblade fight their way deeper into the coralline structure, after they had crashed the birds they were carried in down to Mara´s exterior vaporized in blinding manner. All hostiles for miles had been killed and finally the Sload´s only recently discovered fortress had been breached.

Their souls though had retained their life, for her shield-sisters and Tongue apprentices Mjöll and Uthgerd had twisted themselves and the warriors stationed on the Highlady insubstantial, just as she did for those on the Brightspear.

"Could someone light up the darkness? I need to catch my breath."

The Dragonborn says. There are warriors that sigh then, each of them has been hand-picked from times in battle where they had already seen the likes as this. Which must mean they know how these things go. And by sighing, it was clear enough that they still never are with it in their heart. Few are those that tread on the fields of carnage she leaves in her wake and not hope to never do so again.

Neloth, having come because a warcaster from Thras is too great an experimental specimen for him to pass up, grimaces at touching his concealment-sensor.

"I'll do just that once I catch my breath." Mjöll rattles out, her voice was sore, the other Tongues powerful enough join in on her statement. They are hardly heard under the *thump!*, *thump!*, *thump!* of the giants covering their flanks and the splashing of critter infested waters. Those are waving enchanted weapons of wasabi to repel Daedric battle-droids which plop up from within trenches in the liquid covered ground. The mages on the other hand are told to conserve their reserves for battle, leaving the group to the encroaching blanket of darkness.

They push on into the badly lit shade on swift feet for some time. Once the air turns stale, each party leader whispers quiet orders for the others to their pneumatects, so they would not fall prey to whatever hazardous gases are spread about in the necromancer´s lair. When they encounter the first vaporous acids hanging about like bad weather fronts, one of the few briarhearts among the witch-warriors from the Reach, identifies them due to their cloying scent as somniculous. A drug that can be used to put people to sleep, and in the current case probably one would reawaken as shambling zombie. Once more the Stormcrown´s heiress is glad about sparing Moira´s wretched life, for her hagraven-wife went on and found a new coven which under the she-dragon´s thumb. With her boon and blessing, the coven waged a battle of domination against all others before finally taking over spiritual command of the Forsworn from them all. The Forsworn were ruled by the hags, and the hags thrive at the Dragonborn´s tit.

With the gas clouds comes the first coordinated resistance. Knowledge of the ambush coming to the warriors of Skyrim only because one of the weaker Tongues spies their approach with Aura Whisper.

Cold-Flame Atronachs, summoned from their home in the dark and icy plane of Takubar, another realm of Oblivion with the designation DOP 9497.15, Infernance´s inversion. Their blue flames hit their vanguard just before powerful Harvesters with scores of shrieking soul shriven as support emerge from out of nowhere and try to massacre the softened up ranks with their four arms. Lightning spews from the bug-serpents three digit hands, which at such a close distance cannot be dodged. Only the most valiant of mortals could have hoped to brace themselves successfully against the incoming tide. Not so the Cloudeater´s vanguard, the Daedra enthralled by the crew survived the brunt of the assault long enough for the giants to take a single stride right into the middle of the melee and bash in the Harvesters heads with powerful hammer blows so their heads burst like ripe fruit. Being even taller than the Daedra and being the second wave it proved easy enough.

There is no rest for the wicked, as immediately after the giants Thane Gullveig leads her hirth with a heavy frown under her goat-horned helmet into the fray cloaked in murder-howling battlethirst. Her huscarls, suited up in the strong edges of a carved Nord armour above their ebon-weave, the cloth not suited to shelter them against blunt force, nod in dread-fashion and press forward.

Her weapon of choice is a glaive made by attaching a elongated handle and stahlrim sorcery prism to the Bloodskal - weapon of battle and magik in one. Having imbued it with a spell of roaring flames, she just scratches the exposed membrane between the carapace-plates of the first Harvester fool enough to enter her reach and lights it up like a pyre. Now her charging Feller-of-Life-Webs finally have sufficient light for battle. In Borgakh´s Mountains-of-Hawks, Volendrung grinds to dust three fingered hands and charging spells alike. Eisa Blackthorn´s strike with Auriel´s Shield nearly smashes one Daedric horror into paste and tiny pieces, while its brother-bow sends arrows precisely into snarling maws from young Grimvar´s hands. The corpses the holy bow makes become torches before they hit the ground. Talvas Fathryon uses Sanguine Rose to boost their troops with new heavily armoured Dremora, conjured from the Misty Groove.

The Dunmeri sellsword Jenassa and Erik the Slayer team up by some sort of unspoken agreement; the first darts among the shambling and grasping husks of the soul shriven with the cursed aura of the Ebony Mail around her, while the later plants fire runes with strikes of the Dawnguard´s Rune Hammer. Already weakened by entering the aura of the curse, the soul shriven died in heaps in the fiery explosions of the runes.

The ground suddenly shakes when one of the giants falls to his knees, immediately Banekin, husks of mortals and a range of other abominations jumped the wounded hulk now that they saw a weakness. Eola, swinging the star like glowing Dawnbreaker and weaving destruction, and the shield-maiden Uthgerd the Unbroken splitting her enemies neatly with the altered Rueful Axe escort a stormcloak battle-maiden to the downed giant. But they fail to reach him before some unknown creatures jumps up on his shoulders and gnaws his neck-veins out. In the end their brave goal necessitates them to be saved by a group of Shield-Gnawers from Skyrim´s war for independence against the then Empire in Cyrodiil and all wars following till that one led by Fjola and the holy aura emanating from the Dawnguard´s Rune Shield.

In the meantime on the other side, Ra´jirr and Kharjo butcher their enemies in a dervish state caused by skooma from Llesweyr.

Said slain giant soon rises again, re-animated by the necromantic arts woven into the dome´s atmosphere that would turn all those dying inside into mindless minions of the Thras warcaster. Great is the irony then when Neloth tinkers with the freshly resurrected corpses´ senses in a way that better remains locked up in his hairless head, turning it against his master´s other minions. The unanticipated turn of allegiance bewilders the enemy lines for a time before one of the a small number of Daedric Titans struck it down a final time. In the time he is thusly distracted a triple attack from Thane Gullveig, Neloth and Grimvar Cruel-Sea exterminates that fiend with a crimson wave, two luminous War-Needles, and something unseen but felt.

It nearly turns into a one sided slaughter of the Daedra, but the rapid advance of the mortals had been halted for now as they have to struggle immensely for every step they take forward.

With the progress of the battle more and more holes dying Daedra leave behind in their encirclement are replaced with undead creatures, the reinforcements stationed in the warcaster´s fortress ultimately eradicated hours after the initiation of the shield-crash. The clash of arms only got easier for the attackers afterwards due to their undead focused armament. The Dawnguard artifacts, Meridia´s starfire sword sunder a swath through the skeletons animated by the Law of Correspondence, that said that joints that once moved in a certain fashion should still move the same way after the flesh is lost, with golden streaks traced back to Auriel´s Bow dishing out bountiful cover fire. The small army starts moving forward faster again, with a certain crimson blade hewing down scores at the forefront of the shield-wall.

"I love that cat!" Gullveig says as she suddenly looks up towards the sky, as if she could see what happens beyond the dome.

Moments later the darkness is chased away in an instant as red sun rays are reflected from mirrors hanging in place outside the breach in the coral walls they had entered from. Catching the bloodcursed sun´s beams in glass panels stolen from both the sunbirds and the Cloudeater, J´zargo has done away with the greatest detriment his companions have to face in the coral fortress. For having come from a battle with the Elf-Glory´s very own daughters the Nordic forces had no way to acclimate themselves to the gloom and perpetual night under the coral ceiling, unlike the Daedra who had been ready to ambush them.

Now with a clear sight, the Stormcrown points her Ravenous-Wolf's-Tongue at a corpulent figure sitting in some sort of hovering basin in the distance. Decomposition slime of some undead she had hewn down dripping from it.

"My gift for you!" She shouts at him over the heads of the Banes of Mortals.

At her words, Orcs who had pledged loyalty to her after she slew their chieftain on ritual grounds of Malacath put down their quarry and throw back its covers.

A fully-grown specimen of Thras held by ropes beneath a beam, and launched like some ad-hoc torpedo. With the application of salt, the Destroyers-of-Eagle´s-Hunger initiated hitherto unforeseen peristaltic vibrations within said specimen, propelling it forwards and far into the non-living hordes in the direction of their Sload master. Considerable Thrassian flatulence resulted, and a large *boom* is the results´ result. Foul air carries bone powder and decrepit Battle-Sweat all the way back to the Cloudeater´s crew.

Sadly, once the air has cleared, the warcaster seems unperturbed.

"A most impressive collection you have here. Though I doubt you got them all in Senchal, there were things among the folk we terminated I´ve never seen before."

"Is your lusd for conquest never sathed, Bane of Alduin? Bud led this one formally greed you firsth. Dragonborn, Gullveig Sthorm-Blade of Atgmora, Ysmir Stgormcrown - dhe Dragon of dhe North, Thane in dhe court of Skyrim´s Jagged Crown, Mage Lady of House Thelvanni, Alduin´s Bane. Do finally be able do meed you, dis M´Whoro is floored!"

[...]

"SHOR´S BONES! ... So that is a slugman´s humour? Truly worthy of a Laughter-King! I do have to enquire: just who of the Daedric denizen of the myriad realms beyond put you up with this brain rot? Bal doesn´t approach his pawns with such strategies himself."

She counters his greeting, before having a coughing fit. Her hand leaves from before her mouth blood stained.

The necromancer of the emotionless race stays unresponsive to her taunts. His only answer is to tip down the globe of his telekinetically held staff, on that order another Oblivion gate, previously hidden emerges from the ground in direct line between them. From its blue swirl of energy Dremora encased in Coldharbour´s fel-metal manifest on Mara and Ysmir´s-Birth-Cries begin anew.

"Alduin´s Bane" changes her grip on Bloodskal-glaive into a bastardized version of Hunding´s twelve grip, reinterpreted for use with a glaive instead of a sabre, and meets the first Dremora in a flurry of strikes, who the rested Kynreeve of clan Deathbringer meets with just as much glee. Each one parrying the strikes the other make. In mid combat she changes her hold once more to sever the ghostly-blue eyed Daedra´s hand before her former strike even rends open flesh. His white painted face contorts into a vicious snarl, a lapse in judgement that Mjöll the Lioness aptly uses to bury Chillrend´s glass into his neck.

With an angry shove the Dragon of the North tosses the cooling corpse into the advancing ranks of his lesser, halting the clash as they freeze in face of her wrath leering at them.

"Aye, aye, aye! I know the drill. But now let us draw this last piece of this tale to a close, for I already grow tired of it. So bring about your ace already, let me smash it, slay you swiftly and be done with it. I´m sure there are some mer above that deserve my attention."

"Here speaks your arrogance. Your mythical armamend ceased do assure you victhory afder dhe fall of Harkon of dhe Volkihar. Dhe Prince Molag Bal realized dhis and planned for dhis bathlefield ever since. No madder ids outcome, id won´d be easy for you."

So unforeseen the much bemoaned lack of supernatural "Knowing", which she had grown so accustomed to during the seasons Ald had reared his scaly face, rears its head. Deep down she sees his point, groaning in thought about her weakness.

"Nothing surprising there, having fulfilled the Eve of Day´s prophecy I was slated to vanish wholesale. But I clung onto chunks of the then yet unsung legends, ensuring my prolonged Breath-Drawing in this misery borne world, doomed by the one whose Brain-Pan it sprung from. What did you think I´d do? Curl in on myself and bend over? Unimaginable horrors, even beyond the ken of the sixteen-plus Princes may await me, so what? Should I quiver in terror facing the mysterious? I might every so often, but I´m a Nord, the battle enthusiastic Slaughter-Dew of my forebears flowing thickly in my veins since the Ada, Kyne and Shor´s un-times demand of me to struggle on regardless. So I shall rise above my post in the Wheel un-subjected to the world´s self loathing will. So tell that I-was-once-a-Dreugh ingrate that he should stick to teaching people the Syllable of Royalty he, having cut all love from his chest, will by no means be transmigrated up to."

She continues on, but the rest of her words are unknown gibberish.

"Ever thought of yourself? You are horrifying enough to this one."

"Oh please, tell that to Jubal! ... Curses! That git hasn´t even been born yet. Only I who has seen the past that is the future would know of him. Let me teach you though, he is scary for being mad enough to let that Vehk close enough to make a son."

"Dis one sees!" M´Whoro screams with an over the top imitation of a pleasantly surprised entity in possession of such emotions.

"You aren´d mad, bud enlightened. So be it, M´Whoro will honour your wish. The Necromancer´s Moon, the King of Worm´s - Mannimarco´s celestial body is in perfect frequency for this Sload´s experiment. So please, feel free to struggle as much as you want before your demise."

The corpulent warcaster murmurs an incantation under his breath, the last step of this month long ritual with several failed precursors would now finally be completed and tested against the mightiest fighting force of Tamriel, the Dragonslayer herself and her hirth. Two things happen then, one unseen the other felt.

Unseen are the hidden away in dark corners key-elements of his craft that activated. Wreaths of symbols started glowing unseen by all others apart from some prisoners in cages just above them. The core of each individual formula-ring spinning like a carrousel, originally slow, then picking up speed.

Felt was the shattering of the ground and the moving of the surface they all stood upon. A tentacle of white coral raises itself out of the floor. Obscuring the unmistakeably smug slugman of Thras, though he doesn´t show it, before it shoots out and strikes at Thane Gullveig, who blocks the moving ground with her dragon-faced Headland-of-Swords but is still hoisted off the ground by the force and thrown back behind her own host into the waiting arms of M´Whoro´s undead minions.

The ground does not stop there, it convulses like a living animal, a perforated mound of flesh. Hills and canyons open up, forcing the Cloudeater´s crew to leave behind solid ground and be lifted with hurriedly cast levitation magic or face certain death on the ground. The Dremora still spilling out of Coldharbour´s portal and the undead in turn are raised on tentacles, makeshift hands of coral and whatnot up to their height and the Sword-Meeting continued unabated with the Wound-Sea spraying on the Headland-of-Swords as brave mortals walked the Road-to-Sovngarde.

Soon humanoid golems carve themselves from the moving coral-ground and assist the Daedra in their culling. Creations of undeath as they are, mundane weapons do little against them. They are only able to cut off or shatter parts of them that reform after funnelling some energy out of the sacrifices as nourishment to boost their vile essence, leaving the golem virtually unscathed. Other pieces of coral slither as smaller tentacles or serpent guises onto the Children-of-Skyrim and burrow into their flesh wherever they can find it.

Meanwhile the warcaster, keeping a contingent of purple tailed and two toed Banekin, Harvesters, and his own bleached coral-golems around his pod for protection, deems himself safe enough and surveys the performance of his experimental creations. With great pleasure he notices how only Auriel´s Bow and Meridia´s starfire-sword do well against the swarmfoam like coral-make, with the enchanted weapons only doing some relatively light magical damage.

Further back, crimson arcs cut through corpses even before Storm-Blade hits the ground hard. She gets up in a daze before making motion and joining the scramble herself as she saw her comrades fall. They were losing it quickly. Commands were needed.

With the wave of a hand she transfigures her cuirass into the shapes of three pairs of war-arms, and conjures lesser Daedric spirits to have them dwell within and reach across great distance to pluck heads and hearts, like fruits from a basket. Now uncovered, those brave enough to look, find a hollow where her left tit should be. Within, a round, revolving chunk of volcanic basalt laced with crimson and laughing madly with the Thane´s own voice.

"Wretched cur! I will have your soul for this!"

Her words are such a precious thing, scarce, and something to handle carefully, lest she harms someone with them. But now a mighty voice boomed from within her chest, a powerful, superhuman sound even, as if some greater being was playing her lungs and vocal box like an instrument.

"She´s going dragon!" A hoary Nord shrieks with terrified disbelief colouring his small voice.

The air snapped like tiny twigs burning in a fire when she shows that her momentary inability to Shout is naught but a cruel illusions. Wyrms, two of them, one Gosling-of-grim-Shor black, the other Whale-Road blue burst forth with immortal vitality from her back, somehow passing unhindered through her garb. Symbiotics she had once chosen to plant inside of her. One speaks to dodge a sudden blast, whose necrotic energies would have been infectious with the slightest of touches. The other causes space occupying matter is liquefied and swallowed down a well rested throat, the scaled head´s three-compound eyes darting around in obvious hunger for always more. The coral-make spews out some of its fundamentally unhealthy miasmal essence from pores which is pulled into the black head´s black throat just like the rest.

The Stormcrown takes a stroll cloaked in the searing flames of a blizzard. Her strides, having an unexpected reach, crack the ground as she moves past dying foes and arrives before M´Whoro, not showing any signs she minds the Thrassian´s highly obscene odour.

"Quit... **talking in hurricane**." Someone, probably another Tongue judged by the power lacing the words, shouts over to her. Or maybe it was just the echo in everything's ears, thundercracked by Thu´um.

The air took on a sharp, chlorine smell, and every nerve in Thane Gullveig´s body seemed to hum as lightning surged in a great arch and traps spontaneously activated without warning. But she was well prepared and threw up a screen which soaked the electricity into metal traps. She followed just behind and evaded the traps by advancing, madness!

So, the Sloads would evaluate it.

With a jump of inhuman height she latches onto the floating pod like a huge spider, denting its sides and making the vaporous liquid within leak out through fissures. With obvious glee she observes the Sload mage trying to activate his recall spell and teleporting away. His faces, calm as always, doesn´t show any confusion but the three headed she-dragon explains what hinders him from fleeing anyway. If for his or the others benefit remains questionable.

"Through study of a simple Evoker´s Block we came up with a new matrix based on Ralston´s Constant of Universal Inversion. Naturally this only would allow us to cancel out patterns perceived and understood by the caster. It is thus that we needed to adapt Galerion´s form of Casting and Traven´s first Axiom of Magic to our needs. That´s how myself, Neloth and someone who forgot more about the clever-craft than the Sload as a collective would ever know about came up with this adaptive ward, a basis for a complete Thaumaturgic Eliminator. ..."

She is interrupted by a foolish yet brave Dremora, whose attempts at blasting her with fel-fire gets him impaled by the Bloodskal-glaive held in the blue head´s maw. The wyrm promptly begins to gorge itself on the Daedra mage. Meanwhile one of the _Dovahkiin´s_ eight arms pulls a wickedly hooked and multi-bladed steel mace from her belt.

"Accursed spectre of a bygone civilization, how did you escape the breach of eternal stasis which seals away the Elder Wood?"

"Those your last words? My best regards to Bal! Should you ever get to meet him again!"

She snarls with gleaming eyes at the calm Sload´s face before thrusting it all the way to the handle into his chest, crushing a minor ward and advanced flesh spell like they do not even register in her perception. The mace, stolen from his lord and maker through the alteration rituals performed by Nelacar, had been the reason for Molag Bal´s growing ire with Ysmir Gullveig of Atmora. And now the same mace that started it all also ended this chapter - not.

Thane Gullveig was gutting him, up, left, and to the sternum. Tearing out chunks of flesh with its hooks and Sload juices, but the Sload still prattled on.

"Aptly insane in committed redwork. You've gone dragon. You've gone and got this ones abdomen out. You've gone and kept this one animated throughout this all with that northern breeze of yours in this one´s lungs. All just to declare your fury."

"Oh look! Your ears are bleeding. And I have such a dislike for torture. You've made me change my mind. I do that."

The she-dragon croons in retort and then stops the talking, stabbing and hitting until the necromancer´s whole dead half-skull was his spiked on the mace. Grimvar vomited when he saw the Stormblade continue the conversation in two pitches.

"You've won this one. For this one's a marionette cranium," the Stormcrown heiress said in the imitation of the dead warcaster´s voice.

"I'm a puppeteer." The Stormcrown heiress said as herself.

"You nudge this one´s cranium back and forth on this pike and talk to yourself as someone you commit to memory."

"Look, I can make you nod with your own head. You're starting to rot too fast. ... Know this before I send you to the Cairn, the ghosts of ancient heroes always hover unseen and unheard around you, discerning and mocking your every thought and secret."

The last part she sneers at him like a covert threat, then she swings the mace and lets the head´s rest fall to the floor beneath the pod that has crashed in the interim.

Only now, finally the mage´s soul finds release from his tortured body, having been kept sealed in the dead flesh by her wind. Once free, eternal suffering greets it as it is promptly consumed by the Black Star dangling from her waist.

"It´s as we contemplated, the slugs were planning something. For them to lure so many of us here they might actually try to assault Tamriel itself. Sound the evac orders, and prim the whale for diving out of ol´Mara´s corona. I got no idea what the six pointed-carriage and steed-driving manifold-mathematical formation they grew on the lower levels will do."

She says to no one in particular, but J´zargo´s sharp moonsugar heightened senses pick up on it and relay them to what magic users remain on the Cloudeater. Down below, as she finishes speaking, Ysmir Strundu´ul´s painted tongue darts out and laps up men, mer and all other living beings around her like the World-Eater himself before swallowing them whole.

 **"** **Od-Ah-Viing! Dur-Neh-Viir!** Get me fucking out of here!"

The dome begins to further collapse under the culminated rhetoric of ten or so Tongues – those she swallowed! She starts running to the exit while dodging the falling pieces of the ceiling.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

 **Commentary extracted from the Collection of 4E Codices Ippolita Fonte, Void Legate of the 4th Legion on the Great Bird Hunt of 4E230**

 _"The sheer vastness of the battlefield as well as its various dimensions of conflict ... unimaginable."_

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

 **The empty Void between the Aedric planes of Mara and Zenithar/ actual**

Light slows down in the region before halting completely. What were once rays of the sun´s magnificence now turns into testaments of Altmeri splendour.

Sun Birds!

Having ridden the solar winds they catch on their manifold pairs of differently sized sails, the countless gems encrusting them and the due to matter-folding magicks diminishable struts making them look like compound-insect wings, all the way from Secunda they now appear on mapped-Aurbis edge. Their "wings" quickly vanishing as they ceased rapid flight as the light reflected shifts into unseen spectrums. The Crystalarrow surrounded by her sisters, her proportionally diminutive neck scouring the void with glaring bulb-eyes, illuminating the Void´s obscurity.

After the throat, the neck adorned with the first of the solar sails, a broad but small chest, mostly serving as armour for the palanquin, swiftly ends where the long, frailly slim **stilt** legs commence. Those clasped the "egg" tightly, as they served little else during the flight serving until the Altmer´bird wishes to land or grapple with her opponent. Said "egg", as the palanquin is mockingly called by many due to its shape, makes up the up the rest of the bird´s body. The structure within which the Altmer crew is carried in is visible through the half translucent skin and flesh of the bird. The whole being looking like a torchbug´s thorax. In fact the whole bird looked more like a bee or torchbug whose head was changed with that of a large beaked bird and had all its leg pairs ripped out save one. Behind the palanquin sun discs burning with aetherfire trail behind it on long strings of crystal-light in the sunbird´s wake, like a bird´s tail.

Immediately, the sunreeves of the 3rd armada instruct their crew to up the sun song, and the already searing sun singe grows in power until burning halos surround the first wave of many waves of birds and safeguard all birds following them from all onlookers sights with obscurity by light – thus inestimable!

In the midst of those inestimable starcrafts there is some sort of queer, merish mega-fetish, an immaterial magicka-construct reminding some onlookers of large festival shrines or palaces. They tried to hide the itinerant temple under powerful glamours, but whatever it is, its radiance proves itself to be overwhelming all efforts of stealth and concealment, while the Altmer prove themselves incapable to contain its leaking power.

One must imagine the high morale and eagerness spread among the crews! What better, what greater day could they hope to live in? A dragonborn – doom driven mortal with myth arms and shields! A legend would die at their hands. The moral of the Altmer soars Aetherius high!

That is …

… until before them they are barred from advancing by the Nord´s war-frame covered snowwhales being expelled by Zenithar´s flickering aura, and from behind, open Void, a slightly damaged convoy of Daedric cleavers bears down on their collective possipoint.

Those, having pursued Dragonborn Gullveig before for trespassing onto Mehrunes Dagon´s Principality earlier that part of eternity, bear animosity for both factions equally in their minds. But having finally arrived in the space of battle they first have to fight their way through the flight of Altmer´birds. Throwing the Altmeri formation off their game, they cause great chaos and turn the Void-battle into a large free for all.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

 **On the snowwhale Oorakgumo hiding inside the slipstream of Zenithar/ actual**

The ancient draugr-warlord Gathrik had been resuscitated from his dream-sleep by the efforts of the Dragonborns, who wanted to raise an army to bolster their influence. During the war for Skyrim´s independence he had been named Thane of the Pale, having supported the north eastern front for months. Now he commands a snowwhale of his own, the bull´s name is Oorakgumo but he is called "Oorak" for short, and intends to do battle with the goldskinned enemy of old in the name of the Jagged Crown and its wielder.

Before him his command room, situated in a long structure on the back of Oorakgumo´s war-frame. It looks quite similar to one of the typical ancient Nord temple-barrow entrance halls, if he steps out from the gates opposite of him he would even stand beneath a row of rib like arches.

He motions for his huscarl Calder to step a away for a bit and then Gathrik, sitting in his throne, shouts at one of his mages with a booming voice, just below Thu´um.

"Cast on all channel-streams! Birds are up for grasps! Time limited! ... And find some void-fibrils the Hist must know!"

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

 **In the Void above Nirn/ semi actual**

Hist super-liner slip seed stalkstrum builtgrown wash branched out in snapthorn belly bass crawler phloematic thornplex virsliclk-ix-that'ls its thatls riggered out scale calyx critical sepals critical corolla critical stemens engage floodbogmud lignicore pasted drowned thing. It makes a sound.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

 **Commentary extracted from the Collection of 4E Codices**

 _"Less fantastic accounts come from the Imperial emissaries of the Reman Dynasty, which describe the city [of Alinor] as straight and glimmering, "a hypnotic swirl of ramparts and impossibly high towers, designed to catch the light of the sun and break it to its component colors, which lies draped across its stones until you are thankful for nightfall."_

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

 **Back on the Oorakgumo/ actual**

"Got a pulse per void-tendril from lower Argonia; after lifting cryptoenchant argument sounds as follows: The Hists leaves will bask in the sun, and join trunks with you if you will oath bind yourselves to let us harvest the aetherial plasm residues."

"Agree and off with it!"

"Launch the wasp rockets! ... The dragons won't be happy about having to give up their meal."

Calder murmurs the second part more to himself than anyone else.

"PAAH! Are they ever?"

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

 **Commentary extracted from the Collection of 4E Codices AD Sun Birds, Directive of the Sapiarch of Oblivion Travel**

 _"Confidential Thalmor Dossier on Dreamsleeve-stored Memospore_

 _Archon Level Approval_

 _To the Council of Primarchs, blessed be your nymics´ mysteries, Crystal Tower, Alinor - posthaste!_

 _Concerning:_

 _Thalm[OR]/Military Branch - Solaris Aurbical Starfleet Command_

 _Article 2043071, on the reacquisition of Sun Birds to reclaim the boundless realms of Aetherius beyond the mundial limits, to be reviewed at your personal leisure._

 _Redacted by the thalmorite bureau of military education and the Aurbical Arcano-Development Oversight Comitee within span of 925996 Approved Phynaster Steps._

 _Designation Individual Unit:_

 _Aldmeri Sun Bird of Alinor - TADSBA (The Aldmeri Dominion Sun Bird of Alinor)_

 _Exemplary historical names: designate SMIS Longbow[M3461R], designate TADSBA Honor Before Glory[M406017R]_

 _Concerning your question on a possible expansion into the Void of Oblivion beyond the already explored borders of the Aurbis and the maximum speed achievable by a Sun Bird of Alinor:_

 _Sunbirds can easily travel with speeds equal to that of a ray of sunlight. In fact it would be more accurate to say that to do so lays in their very nature, being made from degraded sunlight and shifting on solar winds._

 _However this very nature also limits them and is to be held responsible for our previous inability to reach possipoints in Aetherius ever since the Merethic Era! For no matter how many sun rays are channelled, she cannot achieve a speed superior to that of light she is made out off with regular methods._

 _To that goal the bureau of Extranirnic Expansion and Oblivion Travel, already is working on several theories to overcome that hurdle binding us down to the mortal and malleable planes of the Aurbis:_

 _1st Theory: An Aetherial Jump by storing the momentum of several sun rays and deploy this kinetic energy as propellant, which would automatically ascend us above the light gradient existing in the lesser levels of existence._

 _While perhaps the most desirable method. This theory is based on half understood concepts of Phynaster and, to my everlasting regret, the Direnni discovered while interrogating an Atmoran clever man in the 1E that to realise them in our dimension we would need to apply Jhunalistic methods of totemic extrapolation._

 _2nd Theory: Is to compress instantaneously via a creatia tesseract array and release or letting implode an aetherial body of sufficient mass. The expanding energy would be used to catapult the vessel in use forward. The main concern with this theory is the limited number of aetherial bodies available and our perhaps insufficient ability to calculate the factors pertaining to our travel._

 _3rd Theory: Achieving a form of long range teleportation or folding of space, enabling us to traverse space without actually traversing it._

 _4th Theory: Placing the vessel in question into temporal stasis or diapause, coupling this procedure with a mobile time acceleration field surrounding the vessel would allow the crew to be in existence as if true speed above light rays would have been achieved._

 _The 4th theory is until now the only we can reproduce in actuality. The necessary magicka can be accumulated by a Sun Bird under ideal conditions in a year of resting._

 _For the Glory of the Aldmeri Dominion!_

 _Yours in Diplomacy,  
AHM - Sapiarch of Oblivion Travel_

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

 **Corona of Zenithar**

 **Summit of the** ** _Chariot to Sovngarde_** **, Skyrim´s first megalomoth void-fortress/ actual**

The Chariot´s main utility in Skyrim´s growing Void-navy is to enable regular transit between the Void-ports in the Sea of Ghosts, appropriate distances from Solitude/Volkihar, Dawnstar and Windhelm/Winterhold/Solstheim, and the holdings on Masser without relying on Skuldafn´s portal to Sovngarde.

Thus it usually acts as a relay, stationed in synchronous orbit above Skyrim by chronoculic sync-net anchors to Nirn´s slipstream.

It is an appropriately grandiose craft with a roughly diamond shaped base moulded from stahlrim, non-malleable stasis manifested, sung into existence by the dead, and a sprawling castle and outlying armament-bases (each of them having their subsystem slice powered by independent centurion dynamo core bundles scavenged from Dwemeri manufactories) of carved porphyry. The multiple staff-canons housed within on a rotational system are crewed with the less skilled mages, their only tasks are to refuel the staves with the hoard of soul gems gained in the conquest of Blackreach, occasionally rewrite a staff´s enchantment using heartstones and periodically soaking the Hawthorn and Yew staves, staves the size of one of Skyrim´s iron-pine trees, in a solution of glow dust mixed with a transporting agent to enhance their destruction capabilities.

The monstrosity was the first to have Aetherium mined from the depths of Blackreach incorporated into its structure. The rare mineral upholding the incredible powerful levitation enchantments all by itself, reducing the mass of the square kilometre and some large structure to a mere fragment of its true attributes.

For this occasion it has been drawn by snowwhales, their white feathers, fur and blubber shielded under heavy armour, all the way to Zenithar.

The Many-Faced-Priest, nine masks of different metals but similar make save one hang from his fur robes, stands on two overlapping hexagons. A cogon ring, meant to ward of misfortune. In this case mythic backlash. At their points, totems of obscure meaning. Before him, a pedestal of dark iron, encrusted with gold, growing out of the ground. Resting on it was a long cylindrical object wrought of gold and on its ends precious gems of varying colours were worked into the scroll-case. An Elder Scroll.

He is speaking to it in hushed words, trying to use the detritus of dead possibility which is caught and collated by funnelling the Forest´s senesced potential through this Elder Scroll´s grounding irrefutability, he intends to make use of this tear a doorway unto a garden of what could have been and may yet still be. On that garden´s path of certain possibility, he will be able to act as if in several possipoints at once. A process which in its essence is the reverse of what Felldir the Old did in his first battle against Prince Dagon´s much hated foe and father.

In his hand, the Staff of Magnus, a misnomer as he knows.

With one part of his mind he keeps the different volatile spell-strands in harmonious symphony with each other, lest their reaction-effect brings itself to bear prematurely. Nine runes per array, with each strand consisting out of twelve to seventeen arrays, this made for over 8492600 runes.

The runes?

Architectural plan-nodes of the universe, interlinked so the rule can be accessed through a single key/spell focus. A tapestry of Jhunal´s sorcery at its finest, yet about to be unravelled with a whisper.

Two different mental sub-commands each work on a matrix based on the Law of Contagion and the Systems of Sympathetic Magics, a third split thought-body adjusts the two for future merging. He didn´t know how many different versions of the foam of possibility he could realise with the help of the Elder Scroll, so he constructed a second means to strike at the Altmeri Void-fleet as a whole: the principles of contagion mixed with those of sympathetic attraction would allow him to establish a gate of transmission with high percentage of connectivity between all of the enemies sunbirds and affect them all together.

Beside him a miniature simulacrum of the sunbirds. Idols. He breaks it with great effort; the analogy transfers the damage to all sunbirds in his perception as well.

Like with mirror images birds are struck from the sky and drift spiralling Zenithar-wards uncontrollable. Some weather his magic better, having had most adept spell-casters protect them or repair the damage. He is aware of at least two that enveloped their vessels with layers of time until the necessary repairs would be finished.

Either way, the magicka built ceremonial-rites instrument of eight thrones and sixteen shrines able to achieve alteration of the mythic on the scale of a greater palace they had towed between them has been freed to float freely among the endless Void. He can already visualize a slew of sunreeves cursing in their last moments and screaming:

"Impossible! The Sapiarchs of Oblivion Travel and Transliminal Arts assured the Council of Primarchs this was impossible!"

HA!

Mongrels!

Several spinning full-length mirrors appear out of nowhere, teleportation magic. Their answer is fast, and he makes a guess that they had prepared this spell beforehand, but then the Archmage notices the probes launched and set to circle the Void-fleet. Spell-relays, employed to widen the range of their magicks.

Moonstone and malachite armoured soldiers step out of the spinning mirrors around his position, cloaks of sea silk trailing behind their leaders as they brandish lances sparking with lightning and staves bearing flames. He is surrounded on all sides. Stuhn´s-Boards join in an exemplary display of a phalanx and the odd two hundred mer feel themselves secure in their position till the first giant sends them flying with a mighty swing. From behind his gold tusked warlord mask, the priest sends an invigorating breeze his way, Ysmir´s Cough sets itself to work on his valiant giant-warrior so he may survive this battle into which midst he had frown himself.

Somewhere from the left, the priest´s huscarl Gregor´s roar addles their brains and makes them turn tail and flee right into the cannon and spell fire raining down on them from the artillery towers. He briefly wonders how many captains ever had planned to shoot their own ships in the middle of battle.

 _Unslaadaar_ ´s shouts fill the air and goldskins fall onto the stone frozen solid. Finding much joy with trampling the mortals the half-woken dragon, the Dragonborns imitation of **_Al-Du-In_** ´s shout having been a unsuccessful, leaves his perch and bathes in hot Altmer blood fighting in the melee. Of all Drakes and Jills, the great frost wyrm´s hide of stahlrim might be among the strongest of hides.

As it turns out everything happens according to his thane´s prophecy. The slowly-fully-waking draugr deathlord tongue Hoegir One-Eye, who could see the future after leaving his gouged out eye with a bog god in hoary Atmora, and had become his thane as he sought to turn the ruins of Bromjunaar into his own jarldom after the kingsmoot.

"For now let´s not cause even further wrinkles and grey hairs upon the High King´s head."

He mutters to himself half amused, half serious. Having another factor in his shaky peace with the last die prematurely would bode ill for all.

Pushing future schemes in the eternal game of power from his mind for now he turns towards the first mer to make it all the ten or so meters to him after their ranks were blown apart. The Altmer, one of the caped commanders of their boarding party, stops in mid-stride, his mouth open as if to scream, though no sound issues. Instead a smoking green fluid vomits out. He claps his free spell-hand to his head as the same viscous stuff jets from his eyes and ears. Holes begin to burst in his abdomen, and he crumples, breaking into pieces. Where the vitriol touches stone, it too begins to dissolve.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

A swarm of Histships is the first to show up, their void-fibril-net system probably made them aware of what had been going on in quasi real time.

The Ruby Throne of Cyrodiil´s Void-castles, collections of towers on upturned crags of rock, immense in their entire, red loops shining like earrings along their flanks, cooling from the magicka they used,

announces their presence with spatial rifts tearing apart the Altmer´birds.

"Battlespires...?"

J´zargo muses surprised that the Cyrods had managed to tow one of them that far into combated space without anyone noticing.

His moonsugar addled face, twisted into stupefied inconceivability, causes the battlemages to fail to contain hardly muffled snorts and laughs as they see it in their study gel screens held aloft by red silk ribbons.

The last to join the fray are some odd twenty courageous Dremora pirates, not fearing the Prince´s scorn.

Gullveig, after having been pulled up into the whale´s gaping mouth by means of a sinew-cable tied around her waist, pulls down her lower jaw, unhinges it and spits out all those she had swallowed previously in a gut wrenching show onto its soul gem and stahlrim covered insides. Putting her face in order with a *snap*, she then turns away from the heap of haphazardly sticking out limbs and throws another glance downwards from the rising Cloudeater. Noting _Odahviing_ ´s calm presence and _Durnehvirr_ ´s return to the Soul Cain. Already has her voidcraft leapt out of inner reaches of Mara and is now fighting against the spatial-anomalies coming from rifts in space oh so similar to the disaster that had befallen Winterhold during her quest to separate the mad Thalmor agent Ancano from the Eye of Magnus, as well as the more natural turbulences in the slipstream caused by the instability of the surrounding space.

All because of whatever magicks the foul slugman, may his spirit rot in the Under-Halls!, had prepared to unleash on them on the King of Rape´s behest.

Where once the great dome of white coral stood, visible even at these heights, now a complex array of arcane formulas and forms of strangely angled geometry warbled space. It was like a brand or scar carved out of Mara´s crust, but one could not really define it as such either. Parts of it are simply too strange and otherworldly, incorporating concepts her _dovahsil_ has no problem with but her mortal mind refused to even glance at. Others are truly basic concepts of the clever-craft as it is practiced by the ancient practices of mankind; to draw energy from the plane itself and have it fuel a spell-weave. From voidstones, taproots harvested by hags, to heartstones and many other apparati made over the centuries since Vanus Galerion brought the Psijics understanding of magic to the mainland of Tamriel, all of those used this concept.

While mostly ousted of contemporary teachings due to the inefficiency of the art compared to draw magicka out of Aetherius itself, the concept is widely known and applied. But NEVER on this scale!

For this grand-magick too is devouring in huge gulps the infinite power of the Aedra to power its effect.

The origin of that eerie magecraft is undoubtedly Daedric, while several of the few glyphs she recognizes are taken from the Elder Script, which she had spent months scowling at when she tried to discern the qualities of the Eye of Magnus and studied the Black Books of the Woodland Man. Others are Daedric runes. The craft incorporates [Oht], [Hefhed], and others, but surprisingly never at the centre of the layered geometries but only at its outer bounds.

The most accurate description of the ... mago-myth-craft itself for the lack of a better word, she can think up on the fly is that it looks like pus coming out of an infected wound, but not in a mere trickle, but rather a twisting geyser of blue/white acid that doesn´t eat matter but rather space-time itself. Something like light causing a spatial brand without heat but still based in length, width and depth, or canyons along the existence of impossible geometries like parallel lines that intersect, and a couple of other things she has no words for in a mortal tongue. How can she explain the physical possibility for a triangle to touch each of the four inner corners of a rectangle. With the input shapes that make no sense to men or mer, additional variables, standard reality points to the Void Ghost and grabs a bucket of skooma.

She starts slightly and silently laughing in shock. Though she could see "it", she realised she could never describe "it". Already she can foresee what will happen, and the few limited moves she can still do to abate the outcome.

 **"Su-Zul-Gut!"** Now her voice is carried by the air directly to the ears of her targets through the distance between them.

 **"Put in the weystone focus and raise the barrier, give all available magicka to it! Reroute all other efforts in securing the crew and provisions."**

Mere few seconds later, menhirs along the hundred meter voidcraft start to raise up out of their shielded niches and dangerously slowly begin to emanate a green glow from the swirls and totems carved into their stonework. Once calibrated, an matted field of mottled green light starts to revolve around the Void-Treader.

And then it ceases to be. The Cloudeater, several Altmer´birds and a good chunk of Mara vanish from the observation stations of the collected Void-fleets as something happened.

Once the light of the arcane-formation carved into Mara´s crust had reached its zenith, possipoints were mangled and space rend. The Void opened itself up to another void of unknown quality, burgeoning out until the spatial-escalations rim had overtaken several void-crafts, asteroids and what not. All before sucking them into itself before smoothing out and stablizing.

Leaving behind untouched, unmarred spatial continuity, as if nothing ever had happened.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

She dreamed of a march through a dusty plain. A long parade of dragons/Dovah, stretching endlessly back to a distant horizon.

Led by a three-headed, scintillating, burning gold, horns tipped with lapis lazuli and gloriously jewelled with blood Jill towards a distant light just over the hill.

It was a preposterous sight in her modest opinion. The walking ways of the drakes was nothing new to her. But not only were her kin wearing impenetrable scale-hide, but also the oddest of objects on their persons:

One lugged around Magnus´ Eye curled in his wing like a female bird would cradle her egg, the other propped against the ground to steady himself.

Another wore a complementary breastplate of rusted swords over his scales.

A third one had a crystal forest growing on his back, just like the fourth had glowing and non-glowing mushrooms.

Skull- and knife-eared necklaces, a large golden cauldron hanging from straps held in one´s _jot_ and even ships. Ships! Ships as far back as she could see.

Behind them, portentously looming, far above the normally sky darkening Dovah, a giant brass animunculus like a Tower. A robot of crazy dimensions and proportions, the ANumidium.

Seen from above, after a unexpected shift in her dream, the bizarre angled track-trail the wyrms stamped into the dust spelled out E.X.O.D.U.S.

But all that she could stomach. The sticks and trinkets of Dweme-gold, the huge totems held into the sky by additional war-arms… All that didn´t get to her – what did, was the rhythmic sideways sway of their long serpentine necks, hypnotic in their mass.

Like a badly choreographed group dance.

Like a Dovah/dragon version of a maddened duck or chicken horde that does not know if they should peck the ground or not.

Just instead of up and down, bobbing left and right.

Finally she wakes...

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

 **Unknown Void/ actual**

A immense something ploughs through the scenery of the far-flung void in the Void. Its shape and nature cannot be straightforwardly recognized, so distorted has it turned out to be by the conduct of what has befallen it. One possibly will state it to be approximately bean fashioned, but that would be wrong as well as one half is far narrower than whichever bean has business to exist evaluated on its forward half.

Whichever viewpoint one may side with, its outline aside, it´s a large mass of ice. A blob of white/blue crystal floating before the cosmic tapestry of luminous stars, a single nebula to its upper left and the dark, dark void pretty much everywhere else enclosing them all.

That is the status quo. Might have changed drastically compared previous instances of its existence, who knows? Perhaps it only became like that after some unfortunate incident where the cadaver of a single snowwhale, sewn and moulded into a single bulk with a heap of other corpses, had been caught in the space/folding/distance-crossing/rending of some unheard of magicks and cast adrift wherever it was spawned once more. Assured is only that within that blob of ice, shadows seem to dance until at long last a carved pickaxe breaks the icy crust from within. The chunk that falls away reveals a bearded and grizzled four-horned face. The giant grunts just once when looking into the greater dark and subsequently resumes his work.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

 **Gullveig´s Chamber within the Cloudeater/ actual**

Neloth stands before the sealed entrance; the intricate design of the swirls indicates that a Nordic bloodseal is used as lock on the ebony/stahlrim gate. The Stormblade´s carls stand around him in loose groups, they all came to hold council. All of them careful not to touch any of the myriads of tomes and grimoires the she-dragon somehow managed to stash into mere two shelves that never should fit all of them. And she would never run out of room as is, as the books are caught and trapped in infinite, identical copies of the same shelf. Somewhere among this hidden treasure of forbidden lore are both the Oghma Infinium, Shalidor´s Scripts and the Black Books.

Just now, Valdimar steps back after reporting the progress his team had in dismantling the ice-shell enclosing them. At least their water reserves are filled to the brim, but that was the only good news he had for his thane. For the few giants they have in their midst, hired as mercenaries against the Dominion, are grumbling about not being able to return to their mammoth herds and females.

They grow restless and his thane would have to talk to pacify them somehow.

Neloth´s adopted daughter acknowledges his report and motions for him to continue eating. The warrior-poet herself is playing a quiet melody on her harp while reclined on heaps of precious furs covering her dais. This is rare, as normally she restricts herself to a mammoth-bone flute during most of her travels as she fears the fragile instruments destruction. The old Telvanni mage notices that she hides the gruesome black and putrid scar along her spine Hermaeus Mora inflicted on her with his contaminating fel-energies under a simple shift of woven tree bark thrown over her smallclothes. To his great ire, as he would like another chance to study it. But not even a peak is granted him, and clothed in the commonplace garb the only remains of her more often than not fierce look are some more mundane pale blue woad paintings covering her limbs in meandering swirls, and totemic fables as well as her silver thane- torc/torque on her neck before the background of her, for once unrestrained and un-dyed hair, which falls down over her shoulders in a mane of golden locks.

Ansijoemia, their Quey pilot, rests her head in the Gullveig´s lap. She is being tended to by the Dragonborn´s witch-daughter, the pity-wife Borgakh, Anise and Helgi, who apply salves to her skin and treat her against the overexposure to magicka and the fried nervous system from the overload.

The melancholic tune her fingers gain from the strings makes her appear to mourn having been stranded in unknown Void. If there is any truth behind that impression Neloth doesn´t know, nor does it interest him a great deal. But some of the people listening intently to her play with bodies cocooned in warmth through furs slung around them do have watery eyes. She is good like that.

J´zargo steps forward.

"Tis one has managed to extrapolated our position."

"Well then out with it, don´t put us on the torture rack!"

Sinmir barks.

„Well since you asked so nicely. Very well then, we are in the ooh so distant and uncharted Void beyond the stars of the Mage constellation. 9282723400 continuous leaps away from Nirn…"

"Curse you, Sheogorath!"

Someone bellows.

"… At least according to the stars. For this one couldn´t even find any known soul-wavelength-ripples in the Dreamsleeve. We are THAT far away from their epicenters."

[...]

"How about mangling the Time Dragon? I´m positive we can design a fatalism that fixes us in charted regions of the Aurbis."

Someone suggests, the first sufficiently brave to preserve hope after these news. The Telvanni mage-lord now finally speaks up, putting a stop to wild speculations with his manifesting presence.

"That is blind hubris! With such a distance from Nirn, the only way I see us returning to known Void in an acceptable time-period is to establish a passage through Aetherius."

"So you propose we do the impossible?"

"Nothing is impossible, fool! I long since knew a way, … but there just never was a reason to actually consider the risks involved acceptable for an experiment. I would have to shrink the nearest star instantaneously via a creatia tesseract array, project the resulting moth-talk well to a zero-point just outside the steed´s hull to slingshot us into era-streams and return us to known Void within the hour."

The Dunmer removes her from his field of vision, looking too long at the wyrm made his head hurt unnecessarily.

"I take it you deemed it as too dangerous for its own good, because it works on the non ratified principles of Phynaster's Inversion, a set of rules that doesn't exist in our own dimension and because Magnar´s rat hole might either never recover or the held back magicka swab Mundus in a cataclysmic gesture?"

"Uh – uh."

"And what does all that mage-talk gibberish mean in Tamrielic?"

"It means that we could fail to escape Aetherius trying to make the jump, and then appear and implode in a never ending cycle at our exit location."

Moira explains during a pause in her wife´s tragedy-melody in h-Moll.

"What of our … guests?" Thane Stormblade´s questions cuts through the discussion that would have ensued otherwise. She speaks of the Sload´s prisoners from Mara, whom she had rescued and taken with her without waiting for their approval. The former slaves of Molag Bal are a diverse and strange lot. Some of them are of a heritage known to the people of Nirn, from Nirn or its collective of Aedric attendants or from the Wastes of Oblivion, but some aren't. Those yet unknown races are for the most part quite similar to the crew in their bodies, but at the same time their appearance was so foreign and exotic.

"My Thane. They were put into placenta-cocoons for storage in diapause." Jordis informs her.

"Good. … Wake up anyone who doesn´t belong to a race known on Nirn. I highly doubt they´re going to share a tongue with us. So someone brew me two Hist-mouth-thought-tincture for each of them, we should still have the necessary ingredients, right? Let´s have _tinvaak_ with them."

"Hold on!" Neloth speaks abruptly up again to the surprise of many.

"Speaking with those slaves, are you setting up one of your quests again. Seeking out their homeworlds should they be closer to our possipoint? If so I want no part of it."

Gullveig lips curl in a slight but impious smile. "You discern my schemes so excessively well, so? I beg your pardon, but do you have a problem with not risking your life in fruitless endeavours?"

She asks unrepentantly, finally putting an end to her harp-play, leaning forward she rests the musical utensil on the Quey´s plum butt cheeks, eliciting an "Eeep" from her.

"My theory is unimpeachable. We would reach the nearest aetherial body in less than a year and arrive to your beloved mountains before long."

"Or I'd be apart from them for evermore!" She cuts him off passionately before continuing in a softer manner. "Sure, under the prerequisite of your brainpan only ever coming up with feasible moves, of which I lack any doubt as I am acquainted with your at all times successful experiments, we would accomplish the paramount outcome. But, you cannot pledge to me that your magecraft would be accurately facilitated."

She drives him against the wall by means of sparsely veiled derision and fatal arguments.

"How would you have us act instead? Look forward to Molag Bal visiting those far-off planes once more within our lives and transport all of this back in an sum of instances eclipsed by our mortal lifespan? Or would you rather have us reject Nirn, on your scuffle in opposition to the Thalmor, altogether and pass by the remainder of our lives in on the backwaters of Oblivion?!"

" You talk as if the tiniest spot of hope for the future is blindness in itself. But old Neloth, think of what we could find! Certainly I don´t wish to add to the wrinkles and white hair on the High King´s head, but we already did. No matter what we do from now on, the damage is already done, already we are somewhere without any clue to where! We are in a completely unknown region of the Void, no one known to us beside the et´ada of old perhaps and those new races have ever set foot here. Think of the possibilities! The might you could gather for yourself! So, having seeing and knowing all you do, I ask of you, don´t you wish to boldly go, where no Dunmer, no Telvanni has gone before?"

 **The End**

 **…** **of my TES magitech trip. So, how many stayed with me that far?**


End file.
